O Little Box of M4M Box Set

The Gift of the Gay Guy-3

Christmas Eve dawned icy and gray, but the snow had stopped falling around the time that Derrick had chucked Lee out on his ass into the hall, and, at least from a second floor window of the Mankato Lamplight Inn, the roads seemed passable. It would take ages, Derrick knew, but if he got up and on the road, he’d at least get to St. Paul. His enthusiasm for Christmas in Minnesota had been lukewarm at its zenith, and Christmas Eve by himself in Mankato was out of the question. He’d make it to his mom’s in time for eggnog or wreck a rented PT Cruiser trying.

Sorry as he felt for himself as he lay in bed burping up pepperoni while sleep mocked him from across the room, when he did eventually conk out, it was for nine solid hours, and he woke with a pragmatic attitude. He gave himself credit for reaching out, and big points for getting such an energetic young colt into his bed, and if it cost him sixty bucks and a little chunk of his pride, well, nothing comes for free. If Lee was a prostitute, Derrick mused, at least he was a pretty cheap one, and you got some bang for your buck. Hell, even a massage therapist charged a dollar a minute…

His disposition was downright sunny when he dragged his suitcase down the stairs and set out for the Lamplight continental breakfast. It was Christmas, after all, and he’d given himself a present that he’d been wanting for a long time. Some coffee, a couple muffins, maybe half a grapefruit, and he’d put Lee, and indeed all of Mankato, behind him.

Seeing Lee in the lobby shouldn’t have come as such a surprise; hadn’t the entire episode begun because he’d had nowhere else to go? But now Derrick knew he had at least sixty bucks to fritter away, and he had rather assumed he would have used at least part of that to go…well, away. Lee was perched on the same couch on which Derrick had found him the night before, but this morning he was surrounded by—very nearly buried under a wriggling pile of—young kids, ranging in age from toddler to tween. Lee was laughing, and it sounded to Derrick like the kids were calling him “Santa,” but if things with Lee hadn’t been what they’d seemed last night, then surely he was misinterpreting this scene. There was a little tree strung with lights in the corner near the couch that Derrick had failed to notice the night before, focused as he’d been on Lee, and two or three of the smaller children seemed to be tottering back and forth between Lee and the tree, clutching gift shop-style sundries—key chains, glittery pencils, “All I got was this lousy T-shirt”—that they occasionally squatted to bang against the floor or Lee’s long shins. At intervals, this or that parent would step in and ask their jittery progeny, “Did you say thank you?,” at which point a chorus of “Thank You!” would arise, and Lee would laughingly sputter “Ho ho ho.”

When Lee first caught sight of Derrick, he looked away, but Derrick held his ground and eventually their eyes met. Lee gave a nod of acknowledgment, and Derrick asked him, “What’s going on?”

“Oh, hey,” Lee said. Extracting himself from his circle of fans proved to be a process; no sooner would Lee pry loose the clutches of one child than two more would adhere themselves to his back or his leg. Lee raised his voice so that at least some of the parents could hear and said, “Santa needs to get up and get him some breakfast,” which garnered him enough backup to clear the way for him to stand up and cross the lobby to Derrick.

“Hey,” he said again.

“Hey,” Derrick said. “I didn’t really expect to see you again. I figured maybe some of that could’ve been cab fare. What’s going on down here?” he asked. “What’s with ‘Santa?’”

“Oh, that,” Lee said, waving his hand in front of his face. “It’s just these families I met. Couple of ‘em, got stuck here last night like we did. I guess there was a Greyhound bus got turned back, around the same time as we…well, anyway. Bus driver apparently cleared out this morning, didn’t really bother with ‘All aboard,’ they figure he must live in Minneapolis, right? So here they are, none of ‘em with anybody in Mankato, none of ‘em with any money. ‘Merry Christmas,’ right?”

“So you…?”

Lee shrugged. “It’s just s**t from the gift shop; front desk guy opened up for me. How you gonna tell a three-year-old he’s not getting anything for Christmas because Asshole the Bus Driver left without ‘em?”

“But where’d you…?”

Lee looked away over his shoulder, gave his head a little shake. Don’t ask.

Wrong question, Derrick understood. He knew where Lee’d gotten it. “I mean, I thought you needed that money.”

“I did,” Lee said. “I do. But they’re just little kids. They need Christmas a lot more than I need sixty bucks.” Another shrug of those pointy shoulders. “I’ll figure something out.”

Derrick didn’t fully understand why he didn’t want to smack Lee upside the head now that he was close enough to do it. Had this dipshit who’d been so desperate for money that he’d robbed a one-night stand really turned around and spent it on presents for a bunch of strangers’ kids? Knowingly stranding himself in Mankato anew in the process?

“I don’t know what to do with that,” Derrick admitted.

“You don’t have to ‘do’ anything with it,” Lee pointed out. “I’ll figure something out. Apparently Greyhound’s sending another bus, maybe there’s still an airplane here. I’ll work it out. Maybe the Lamplight Inn is hiring,” he said, waving his arm towards the front desk.

Derrick laughed. “You’re an i***t, aren’t you?”

“I’ll tell you what,” Lee said. “I was an i***t to f**k up a night with a guy like you.”

In an effort to make clear his intentions to his own heart and mind, Derrick took a step back. “Yeah, well, that’s right you were.” Lee was not his problem, Derrick sternly reminded himself. The money that Lee now didn’t have was money that he’d stolen from Derrick, and it certainly wasn’t up to Derrick to hoist Lee out of the hole he’d dug for himself. Get in the car, he instructed himself, and drive away.

A little girl around six pranced up to them while Derrick was willing his feet to move. Her lopsided pigtails were tied with what were obviously brand new star-print shoelaces, and she fingered her pink sunglasses in the fashion that Derrick surmised she must be certain the movie stars do. “He looks more like Santa than you do,” she announced to Lee, jerking her thumb towards Derrick.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“I told you,” Lee said, “I’m not Santa. Santa’s my grandpa.”

“He’s not your grandpa,” she declared after examining Derrick from behind her plastic lenses.

“This guy’s not Santa,” Lee assured her. “Did he give you any presents?”

“No, you did.”

“So…?”

She considered this. “So maybe Santa is your grandpa.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying!”

“Well, anyway, tell him thanks for the sunglasses, K?”

The smile Lee gave her was a ray of sunshine that Derrick immediately wished he hadn’t seen. “You know I will,” Lee assured the girl as she flounced away.

Derrick sighed. “I hope you won’t make me regret this,” he said. “But do you need a ride? If you want to go back to the airport, or, you know…” Deep breath, then: “If you want to go to Minneapolis.”

Lee turned that smile on Derrick. “You mean it?”

“I don’t know,” Derrick admitted.

“Well, then, let me say yes before you come to your senses,” Lee said.

“You know,” Lee said, once Derrick had secured a cup of takeaway coffee and directions to the highway and they were slip-sliding their way out of the parking lot. “I can’t make you do anything.”

Derrick laughed. “See, you say that,” he said, “and yet, here you are. Why don’t you see if you can make something that’s not mass or ‘Blue Christmas’ appear on the radio.”

Lee leaned forward in his seat. “I’m not sure I’m all that powerful,” he said, fiddling with various buttons on the unfamiliar stereo. “But I’ll try.”