Christmas Cole Read online

  Mark did have the good grace to stop thrusting. He hadn’t, however, pulled out. The kid’s shining black eyes, at least, were wide in shock.

  “You’re home early,” Mark said in a voice that was soft and even.

  “I….” Javier swallowed. “Yes.”

  “Can you give me ten minutes, darling?” Mark asked.

  Javier moved his head up and down once. Turned. Then he’d gone outside into the unseasonably warm night and sat at one of the glass-topped tables by the heated pool.

  Mark’s fucking a kid.

  A kid who was younger than he had been when he’d first met Mark.

  Javier didn’t think too much else. He’d been too stunned.

  Mark had taken every bit of his ten minutes. He’d come out in his whiter than white robe and sat down at the table, sliding a short glass of something over to Javier—probably whisky. Javier had taken it, surprised to see his hand shaking, and took a sip.

  The Macallan?

  Was this good or bad?

  “Do we need to discuss this, darling?” Mark had said then, and Javier had turned to look into his handsome face. Hair silver in the pool light, eyes shining blue—

  (but not like hers!)

  “Are….” Javier had to take a breath before he could finish. “Are you in love with him?”

  Mark had laughed at that. His real laugh—the one that for some reason always reminded Javier of wind chimes—and not the fake one he used for bad jokes with clients or “important” members of gay society. “Christ, no!” Mark said.

  Javier nodded. His mind was whirling now. What to say? Just pretend nothing had happened? No. “Is he my replacement?” Javier asked.

  “For what?” Mark answered with a question.

  “Are you done with me?” Javier said before he could stop himself, and he then held his breath.

  “Oh!” Mark laughed again. “Not hardly, darling. He’s just a hustler. A pretty little bottom whore.”

  “You were fucking him.” It had been a statement, not a question.

  “Javy, I like to fuck boys.” Another statement.

  “You don’t fuck me anymore.” It had almost been a cry, but somehow Javier had gained control of his emotions.

  Mark took a drink from his own glass. “Ahhed” at its taste. Said, “You aren’t a boy anymore, Javy. You haven’t been in a long time. You weren’t really when we met.”

  “Then why keep me around?”

  “You had—have—other qualities.” Mark swirled his whisky in his glass. “My friends began to tease me. No. It was beyond teasing. Boys, they said, were all right to play with, but not to keep around. Then I met you. You were a little older than what I usually went for, but not too old. Enough that they tolerated you.”

  The words stung a bit, even though they didn’t surprise Javier. He knew he was a trophy. It was just that the words had never been said out loud.

  “Then you wound up having a head on your shoulders, could carry on a conversation. At first it amused them, then you began to impress them.” Mark laughed. “I will never forget when you recommended that stock to Jamison—which he ignored—and then it turned out to be good advice. He’d have made a shitload of money if he’d only listened. I certainly listen, don’t I?”

  Javier paused. “Yes,” he said.

  “After that, they started thinking differently about you. They even respected you. And they certainly didn’t expect us to last. Most of them can’t keep a lover for more than a year or two.”

  “Why do you keep me?”

  “Lots of reasons, Javy. There’s the fact that you were—still are—magnificent in bed. You’re beautiful. What’s more, rather than get all crazy on me for my lack of interest in the games you like to play—your leather and kinky games—and my lost interest in fucking you, you discreetly find playmates and don’t embarrass me. So we’re in the same boat. You find playmates for your tastes, and I do the same.”

  Mark tossed back the end of his drink and said, “So I ask you, then, are you done with me?”

  Like that, the shoe was on the other foot.

  Could he be upset that Mark was having sex with other men? He had sex with others. Why not Mark? Wasn’t it the same thing? “No,” Javier said, hardly noticing he’d spoken aloud. It wasn’t the same thing.

  “Oh good,” Mark said, misunderstanding Javier’s comment as an “all’s well.”

  Javier didn’t correct him, though. What was he going to do? Leave? He couldn’t imagine it. Leaving this home, and everything that went with it? Going back to the way things had been before?

  “Thank God, Javy. I was worried there you were going to get all Mildred Pierce with me. Throw a fit. Break things.”

  “No breaking things,” Javier had somehow managed. “When have I ever caused a scene?”

  “And thank Christ for that. Finding a new lover is worse than finding a new house or car. Javy, you know me. Know my likes and dislikes. You’re appropriate at all times.”

  Appropriate.

  “You look good at my side.”

  I’m like his Audi R8, his Sean Scully.

  “People may have thought you were nothing but a hustler at first, but you quickly dissuaded them of that notion. Which couldn’t have been more perfect. People make fun of gray and wrinkled men who keep the company of whores.”

  Whores. I wouldn’t want to embarrass him. “You’re not wrinkled.”

  Mark laughed that laugh again. The real one. Happy. “Not with the doctors I can afford.” He began to play with his empty glass, and Javier offered to refill him.

  “Yes, that would be nice.”

  “The Macallan?”

  Mark’s face had lit up at that. “Ah. You see? That little hustler wouldn’t have known the difference between Laphroaig and some Berbiglia rotgut. You must stay.”

  I know the difference between good and bad whisky. I know the whisky he likes is never spelled “whiskey.”

  So he’d gone and refreshed Mark’s drink. Four ice cubes, three fingers. Just the way he liked it. While he was there, Javier quickly dug through the liquor cabinet and found the cheapest booze he could find—obviously something left at a party by one of Mark’s friend’s playthings—and took a huge swig. When he got back, he kissed Mark. He used lots of tongue.

  Their eyes locked for a few seconds. Did Mark taste it? The cheap?

  The cheap like me?

  And so the next night Javier had set out to be inappropriate. Maybe even embarrassingly so.

  Javier was afraid he’d have some major cruising to do. He’d had almost everyone worth having, and he wanted someone new. He didn’t even get any pleasure from the lust he saw in the eyes around him. At least not when the looks came from trolls and blimps. Fuck! Couldn’t they get a clue when they couldn’t even see their own dicks that it was time to go on a frickin’ diet?

  Of course, Javier had to endure Gerald’s pawing. He was the owner of The Male Box, after all. But it wasn’t easy. The man was a blimp and a troll rolled into one.

  To his pleasant surprise, Javier had found someone fast. Someone who wanted him, and Javier needed his ego stroked. He needed it bad. What’s more, the incredibly hot fucker seemed to be more into him than Javier was into the stranger. That was saying something, too, because Javier was really into the guy.

  They went to the guy’s apartment and had sex. Crazy, but Javier had even offered to give up his ass bare, and what was that about? Being inappropriate? Punishment, maybe? Who was he punishing?

  Mark?

  Himself?

  As soon as he’d cum, Javier was done. He wanted out. He didn’t bother to clean up, just scrambled into his designer jeans, his Michael Anthony boots, his Hollister T-shirt, and got the hell out. Ran while he was still high on the sex and before he could think about how he’d offered to bareback with a stranger.

  Only when he bolted out of the elevator, he ran right into the creepy old lady from the night before. She was still wearing her red outfit.


  Weird.

  “You!” he said, and he suddenly remembered—only now!—that she had done something to him the night before. Hypnotized him, maybe (and wasn’t that just crazy?), made him leave the event that was sure to hand him the title of Mr. Kansas City Leather. He’d walked out of The Male Box with hardly a thought.

  “You,” the old biddy whispered in a voice that reminded him of the ice pond he’d walked on when he was twelve. How the ice had cracked….

  “You,” she repeated. “Javier, you could have hurt an old lady.”

  For some reason goose flesh rushed up his arms. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Didn’t I send you home to your man last night?”

  Sure you did. Where I found him fucking a twink whore.

  “And didn’t you learn anything?” she asked, and she actually shook her finger at him.

  “Yeah!” he barked. “I learned something all right.”

  “So now you’re turning around and making Mark pay? Is that it?”

  Javier stiffened. “What?” Did she know? How could she…? “Who are you?”

  “No! Who are you, Javier? Selling yourself to someone for a BMW? For a trip to Greece? To a man who doesn’t even love you?”

  Javier backed away from the woman. Banged into the closed elevator doors. He glanced around, looking for a way out.

  The little old woman snapped her fingers. “Eyes front, Javier.”

  He jumped and their eyes locked. Those blue eyes. They were flashing like tiny thunderstorms. He couldn’t look away. He tried, but to no avail.

  Bruja!

  She laughed. “Witch? No, not that, but I am a force to be reckoned with. Call me a biddy? What other words do you use for people? Blimp? Twink? Troll? Have you forgotten? Forgotten your past? High school? What they called you? Gordo? Maricón? How did those words make you feel? How much did it hurt? So it’s okay, now that you’ve turned yourself into… into this?”

  She stabbed at his chest with her finger, and he gasped at the force of it.

  “Now it’s okay to treat people the way they treated you? That’s not the Golden Rule, Javier. It is ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’, and not ‘do unto others how they have done to you’! Have you forgotten who you were? Have you forgotten your dreams? Have you forgotten how you hurt?”

  She was inches away from him now, and it was all he could do not to cry, not to wet himself.

  Then it was like they were in another place. A huge field of snow, white below, gray above, cold—very cold—and windy.

  Cold.

  And her stormy eyes.

  But then…?

  Then they softened.

  She smiled. The tiniest little smile.

  “I think,” she said as softly as a breeze, “that it’s time you remembered.”

  Chapter Two

  Javier woke to the smell of coffee. Fresh ground, of course. It smelled like the St. Helena, and hadn’t Mark long since trained him to recognize such things? So he could “impress” Mark’s friends, not “embarrass” him? Thank God it wasn’t the Kopi Luwak. Try as he might, Javier couldn’t bring himself to even try something that had been shat out by some Indonesian marsupial.

  “One does need more refined tastes for certain things,” Mark had once said.

  “I’m just not into scat,” Javier returned.

  Mark had just laughed. “I hear that’s about the only thing you’re not into, darling.”

  Javier sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes just as Mark came into his room wearing his blindingly white robe, a large cup of coffee in either hand. Mark’s eyes went wide, and he leapt back, coffee spilling. “Who the hell are you?” he shouted.

  Javier rolled his eyes. “Give me a break, Mark.”

  “I’ll give you one minute to get the hell out of here before I call the police.”

  Javier sighed. “Please, Mark, it’s not funny. I’ve got a terrible headache. I’m not in the mood….” God… headache… hangover? He’d only had a couple of drinks. Then what? Sex? Yeah… and then? What?

  “Javier?” Mark said, his eyes wide (but not like hers!) with shock. “What happened to you?” Mark had gone completely white.

  “What’s wrong, Mark?”

  “My, God! It is you!”

  For some reason Javier felt a chill. “Come on, Mark, stop messing with me. What’s wrong?”

  Mark took a step back, leaned against the bedroom doorframe. “Javy… your face. Your… your body.”

  “What about it?” Javier asked and looked down, and for just a second he thought he saw a big belly. It was some trick of the eye, obviously—the way he was sitting up, perhaps?—that made him look practically pregnant and—

  Javier shifted back against the headboard to get rid of the awful illusion and….

  It didn’t go away.

  “What the fuck…?” He leapt from the bed, and as he stood, he saw the impossible. Somehow, in some way, his thighs had swelled, his stomach had distended, and his proud chest was sagging.

  “No… it can’t be….” Javier looked over at Mark, who still stood, or leaned, in the doorway, cups of coffee still in hand. “Mark!” he cried. “What’s wrong with me?”

  Mark opened his mouth, but no words came out. He shook his head.

  Javier looked down, down at the hairy belly, a hundred thoughts rushing through his mind. What had happened? “My God,” he whispered, and he suddenly caught an image out of the corner of his eyes. When he turned, he was looking at his reflection in the mirror. He recoiled, almost screamed.

  At first it was as if he didn’t recognize the (fat) man in the mirror. Some part of him knew who it was, of course, who it had to be. But his conscious mind, the part that separated what made sense from what didn’t, refused to believe what he was seeing.

  It couldn’t be….

  But it was, of course.

  The man in the mirror was him.

  It’s a dream.

  Of course it is.

  It has to be.

  It was the only thing that made sense.

  Explained everything.

  Why he looked the way he did.

  Heavy. More than heavy. His belly hung down low over his waist, and—Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—even his cock looked smaller.

  Yes, dreaming.

  It explained why Mark was just standing in the bedroom doorway, still holding their coffees and not uttering any words, just making strange little noises.

  It even explained the unseasonably warm December weather—more early autumn than just days before Christmas.

  Javier pinched himself.

  So did the man in the mirror.

  The pinch hurt.

  Javier whined. It was more of a keening noise.

  The man in the mirror was him.

  The man he would have been had he never listened to his high school gym teacher’s advice. The man he would have been had he never lost weight, never worked out, never turned himself into a leatherman.

  Javier felt his head grow light, his knees turn to rubber, saw spots before his eyes. He staggered back and collapsed onto the bed.

  And began to cry.

  The next few days were a nightmare. One awful, humiliating, confusing, frightening blow after another.

  Mark had taken Javier to the emergency room, and there was one ugly moment where it looked like Mark wasn’t going to get out of the car. Like he was just going to drop Javier off at the door and leave.

  But then Mark was parking and even opening the car door for him. Thank God. Mark was scaring him, and the last thing Javier needed now was anything else to be scared of. He needed Mark to be there for him.

  He kept thinking he had to be dreaming. It was a nightmare from which he’d just awaken. He was not that fat kid anymore! No! He couldn’t go back to that. He couldn’t!

  The nightmare got worse inside the emergency room.

  At first it had been confusion. It was like no one was even listening to him. “Water weight�
�� was something that he’d heard, something he’d grabbed onto like a life preserver.

  “It should go away in a few days….”

  But that got thrown away with a poke. Apparently the doctors expected there to be something called “persisting indentation.” But his skin bounced right back. Words like “pitting edema” and “non-pitting edema” were used, but soon those words were put aside as well.

  It was the speed of the weight gain that was the problem. At first they didn’t believe him. Javier could see it in their eyes—looks of pity or skepticism, doubt or even disgust.

  “Mr. Torres, are you sure you haven’t been putting this weight on for months?” one doctor asked. A gorgeous, well-built man. He was one of those from whom Javier had seen both looks of doubt and disgust. It had made Javier’s skin crawl. Made him feel ashamed.

  “No,” Mark had finally offered, a support when Javier had seen more and more that his lover just wanted to run. “Last night he looked the same as always.”

  The doctor had shaken his head. It had been obvious he didn’t believe either of them.

  “It’s true!” Javier had shouted and watched as the doctor flinched. Javier took a deep breath, counted. “Look, man,” he said. “Look at what I’m wearing! The only thing I could get into was these baggy old sweats. Dammit. None of my shoes would even fit! I had to wear these flip-flops on my feet.” He stuck a foot out and flexed his toes, and, God, even those were chubby. His throat hitched at the sight.

  Then Javier remembered the pictures. “Mark. In the back of the car!” He stopped, took another breath, hating the desperation he heard in his voice. “There’s a manila envelope. Could you get it? Please?”

  Mark nodded and left the room without a word. The doctor excused himself as well. “I want to order some tests.”

  It felt as if Mark was gone forever before he returned. Javier had begun to worry that he had just driven off. As it turned out, Mark and Dr. Built came back at the same time.

  “Look, Doctor.” Javier took the large envelope from Mark and pulled out a photograph. “This is me!” He handed the doctor the picture. Javier saw the man’s immediate interest. Javier was good at reading people. He saw the man’s nostrils flare, the flex of the muscles in his jaw, and the doctor’s eyes were such a light blue Javier even saw the man’s pupils dilate.