“Dance?” Jeremy looked at the dance floor as though it was a pit of writhing snakes and not people having fun to a disco mix of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” The colored holiday lights reflected off Jeremy’s wire glasses.
“We don’t have to!” Max laughed, draining his bottle. “You ready for another?”
“Yes!” Jeremy seemed relieved. “My turn! I’ll be back.”
Max leaned on a railing and watched Jeremy weave through the crowd to the bar. The skinny jeans and Henley were a great look. Which apparently a dude at the bar agreed with, since he started hitting on Jeremy while they waited for the bartender.
He looked university age and had a cute smile. Decent bod. Shaggy hair. From a distance, didn’t have a creepy vibe, which was good. He leaned in closer to Jeremy, and Max tensed. Whatever he said made Jeremy laugh.
And Max got even more tense.
This was messed up. Max should have been happy. Not jealous. Not tempted to march over there and shoulder in-between them at the bar. “Jesus,” he muttered to himself. “Who’s the creep now?”
If Jeremy was into this guy, that was great, and Max was going to get his shit together and not be a dick. This is what I get for listening to Honey. Because maybe—maybe—he’d let what Honey had said about Jeremy liking him go to his head. Get under his skin.
This wasn’t the plan. The fairy godfather wasn’t supposed to be jealous. This was a fun distraction. But he’d planned to go to law school since he was a kid, and now he wasn’t sure of that either. Maybe he was shit at plans.
Max gulped his beer, hearing Honey’s persistent voice in his head saying yesterday had been one big, long date. No, enough. He and Jeremy were new friends and that was all. He determinedly looked at the DJ—their Santa suit flapping open over a sparkly padded bra—and stopped spying.
Although… When he looked back—just to make sure Jeremy was still okay—Jeremy had his arms crossed and was shrugging tightly. He got the beers and said goodbye to the guy, who watched Jeremy go and then started talking to the person on his other side.
Jeremy handed Max the beer with a shouted, “Here you go!”
“Thanks!” He took a swig before saying, “So, he was cute.”
“What?” After a brief deer vs. headlights moment, Jeremy shrugged. “Yeah. He was all right.”
“You wanna talk to him more? Don’t worry about me. Go on.”
Something like panic pinched Jeremy’s face. “Do I have to?”
“What? No!” Max slung an arm around him. “Not at all.” He frowned. “Did he say something gross? Do I need to kick his ass?”
“No!” Jeremy laughed, sagging against Max. “He was really nice. Seriously, no ass-kicking required. But thanks.”
Max squeezed him before forcing himself to let go. “Anytime. Come on. Let’s dance. Or shuffle in place. Whatever.”
They sipped their beers and danced, Jeremy’s awkward shuffle slowly loosening up as Boney M came on. Christmas disco didn’t get much better, and they laughed as a group in Santa hats started a dance-off. They clapped and cheered, and Max was pleased that Jeremy seemed to be having fun.
Yet not long after, Jeremy returned from the bathroom with tension in his hunched shoulders and his smile strained. Max asked, “What happened?” He glanced toward the stairs down to the bathrooms. “Do I need to kick someone’s ass after all?”
Jeremy shook his head, but he still wasn’t smiling that bright smile Max had come to enjoy seeing. Max asked, “You had enough? It’s getting really crowded. I could use some fresh air.”
“Yeah?” Jeremy’s face brightened hopefully. “You don’t mind leaving?”
“Nah. Let’s walk back to campus. You hungry? I could go for street meat.”
Jeremy nodded happily, and they collected their coats. Outside, the night was crisp and covered with a fresh layer of white. Leaving the thudding bass behind was a relief, the snow blanketing the night in a peaceful muzzle. They hadn’t brought hats, but there was mercifully no wind.
“There should be a hot dog stand not far,” Max said as they headed up Yonge. He wanted to ask what had happened to upset Jeremy, but maybe he should let Jeremy bring it up himself if he wanted to.
They grabbed sausages and cans of pop, and Max couldn’t help finding it adorable that Jeremy chose orange. After loading their buns with sauerkraut and ketchup and mustard—plus mayo for Max—they headed west on a side street and found a low concrete wall to perch on while they ate. The fresh snow was dry and easy to brush off. The concrete was freezing, but Max ignored that.
They were across from a row of new townhouses decorated with wreaths and white fairy lights. With no wind, it was nice sitting there eating their sausages in companionable silence, their pop cans sitting between them on the wall.
“Mmm. Spicy,” Jeremy mumbled around a bite.
“Mmm,” Max agreed, swallowing his mouthful and washing it down with root beer.
They sat for a while longer until they’d finished eating and their asses got too cold. After crushing their empty cans, Max dropped them into a recycling bin behind a dark restaurant. He burped, and Jeremy laughed, and then they had a quick burping contest because they were twelve.
Jeremy raised his hands. “I can’t compete. You’ve got mad skills.”
“Let me tell you, if there’s one thing being on football teams for years has taught me, it’s teamwork, strategy, and burping.”
Back to an easy silence, they zigzagged along the shockingly quiet residential streets south of Bloor. Even after four years in Toronto, Max was still surprised by just how calm and still the city could be right downtown. True it was Sunday night, but they were only a block or two from a major road, and there was only the crunch of their boots on the snow and salt. Their breath clouded in white plumes.
They passed a townhouse with a sad string of blue lights on a tree. Max said, “I hate it when people only put lights halfway up. Either do the whole thing or forget it. Like, what, you don’t have a ladder? Get a ladder, bro.”
Jeremy chuckled. “I’ve never really thought about it, but you raise a good point. Does your family decorate?”
“Oh yeah. We’re into it. And Christmas was my mom’s fave. Only time of the year we’d go to mass except for weddings and funerals. It was for the carols, not gonna lie.”
“Are you Catholic too?”
“Yeah, my dad’s family is from Goa like my mom’s. He was a baby when they moved here. Goa was colonized by the Portuguese, so big Catholic influence and a lot of Portuguese surnames like ours: Pimenta.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that.”
“Yep. Those Europeans sure loved to colonize.”
Jeremy grimaced. “They sure did.”
Max wasn’t sure he should bring it up, but curiosity won out. “So, are your parents really religious? Is that why it’s been tense?”
Jeremy sighed, pushing up his glasses. “You’d think so, right? But that’s the thing that confuses me most, I guess. They’re not devout or anything. We were always a hundred percent Easter and Christmas Catholics, and not even then sometimes.”