Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

L uke liked Chris. He was a bit gruff outside of the suit, but once he dressed up as Santa, he was great. He was especially good with the kids, and even the ones reluctant to be there seemed pretty happy after their visit, candy canes in hand.

He wondered what the guy’s story was—you didn’t find too many younger guys playing Santa. It was pretty much the older guys who went out for the role. Of course, Luke himself was getting a little long in the tooth maybe for playing an elf. Most guys at twenty-seven had full-time grown-up jobs and stuff like dressing up as an elf was left to the high schoolers. But he liked it, and it was a job during the winter season. It was hard to work landscaping when there was snow everywhere and the ground was frozen.

It was a little after nine and they still had three kids left. Luke didn’t want to disappoint them, but he wasn’t going to force Chris or Tasia to work past closing time, either. He looked to Tasia first, knowing she wouldn’t mind unless she had a hot date. She gave him the thumbs-up. So he looked over at Chris and jerked his head toward the stragglers. Chris didn’t say or do anything for a minute, and Luke was pretty sure that meant it was a no-go. He turned back to the kids and took a breath, ready to give them his best Santa-has-to-go-feed-the-reindeer story.

Before he could, though, Santa spoke. “Ho, ho, ho. Where’s the next little girl, Jolly Elf?”

Luke beamed back at Chris. “Coming right up, Santa.” Then he turned to the little girl in line as he grabbed the clipboard from her dad who handed it over with an extremely grateful look. “Are you ready to see Santa now?” he asked her as he glanced to make sure the paperwork was signed. He gave the clipboard back to the dad and pointed him to Tasia before crouching in front of the little girl, who looked tired and like she’d been about to cry, probably because she’d thought she wasn’t going to get to see Santa after all.

“What’s your name?”

“Caroline.”

“Well, let’s go see Santa, Caroline.” He took her hand and led her over. “Santa, this is Caroline and she’s been such a good girl, waiting in line a long time to come see you.”

“Ho, ho, ho. Is that right? Well, come tell me what you’d like for Christmas.”

Luke shot Chris a grateful look and went to get the next kid.

By the time Santa had seen the last few kids, it was well after nine thirty and even Luke had to admit he was grateful the day was finally over.

He pulled off his elf ears the minute they hit the change room, sighing with relief. He rubbed his real ears, wincing as the blood rushed back in where they’d been pinched.

“Those aren’t comfortable, eh?”

He blinked over at Chris in surprise. It was the first time Chris had started a conversation.

“Nope. The only part of this job I don’t like,” he admitted.

“I didn’t think there was anything you didn’t like,” Chris said, voice dry.

Luke laughed and started stripping. “Yeah, yeah. What can I say, I’m made of holiday spirit.” He pulled on his jeans and a T-shirt and shrugged on his winter coat.

Tasia popped her head around the door. “There’s doughnuts on the break room counter! Get ’em while they’re… not that stale yet.” She laughed and waved, the door banging closed behind her.

“You like doughnuts?” Luke asked. Surely everyone did. They were doughnuts after all.

“I do.”

“All right! I’ll see if there’s any coffee left, and if there isn’t, I’ll heat the kettle up for tea.”

He left Chris to change out of the Santa suit and checked on the situation in the break room. There was indeed still coffee left, but before he got too excited about that, he poured a mouthful into a mug and added a touch of cream before testing. If it had been sitting too long, it was likely to be bitter. It wasn’t, though.

“The coffee’s still good,” he called out. “Score!”

He poured what was left into two mugs, giving them each about three quarters of a cup, which wasn’t bad at all, and then he checked out the doughnut situation. It was a big couple-dozen box and there were five left—two honey crullers, a dutchie, an apple fritter, and a sour cream glazed. He grabbed the dutchie and one of the honey crullers and sat to eat.

He was three quarters of the way through the honey cruller when Chris came out. “Poured out your coffee,” Luke told him, nodding at the cup on the counter.

Chris grunted and went over to it, adding a good amount of cream before opening the doughnut box.

“I’m good with these,” Luke told him. “So you might as well finish them or they’re going to go to waste.” They would be inedible come morning.

Luke hesitated a moment, then put all three doughnuts on a plate and brought them over, sitting across from him.

“Hope you don’t mind, I took the only dutchie.”

“Dutchie?”

Luke picked up the doughnut he’d saved for last. “It’s got raisins.”

“I prefer the apple fritter.”

“Perfect!” He gave Chris a grin.

Chris had a sip of coffee and took a bite of doughnut. They ate in silence for a while, and Luke was done way before Chris.

“Got any plans for this evening?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Me either. I might find something to watch. You wanna come over and watch with me?” Luke wasn’t sure why he’d asked, except that Chris was a nice guy, despite his grumpy demeanor, he was good-looking, and he seemed lonely to Luke.

Chris froze with his doughnut halfway to his mouth and blinked at Luke. “What?” he finally asked.

“You don’t have plans; I don’t have plans. I was thinking we could make a bowl of popcorn and watch a movie or something.” Luke shrugged. He didn’t want to make a big deal out of it—it wasn’t a big deal.

“I. Okay.” Chris looked as surprised he’d said yes as Luke was.

“Awesome! You finish your doughnuts and we can go.” He wasn’t going to let Chris backpedal now that he’d actually agreed.

Chris didn’t eat the doughnuts particularly quickly, but Luke just waited patiently. So if Chris was thinking the invitation would be rescinded if he took his sweet time being ready to go, he had another think coming. It wasn’t like they had to be back here before two tomorrow so even if they didn’t start the movie until eleven or twelve, they still had a chance to get a decent night’s sleep.

“Ready to go?” Luke asked after Chris rinsed his coffee mug and plate at the sink.

“If you’re sure…”

“I am.”

It took them a moment to zip up, pull their tuques on along with mitts and scarves, but then they were ready to go, and they headed out the employee exit, the door shutting firmly behind them.

The bitter wind hit Luke immediately, and he pulled his scarf up over his nose and hunched his shoulders against it. “It’s only a ten-minute walk,” he assured Chris as they headed west. Not that even a ten-minute walk was nice in this weather.

They rounded a corner and the wind was suddenly coming at them from the side instead of head-on, and that made it so much better. Still, it wasn’t conducive to conversation, and Luke just kept his head down and kept moving. Chris was having no trouble keeping up with him, which given he was a good head taller than Luke wasn’t really a surprise.

They got to his place, a little apartment over a bakery, and he took his right glove off to fish out his keys and open up the door. Chris followed him in, and Luke pushed by him to give the door a shove.

“It’s finicky,” he said, explaining why he’d rubbed up against Chris in order to re-close a door Chris had already closed.

Then he pushed past Chris again and took the stairs two at a time. He unlocked his door and ushered Chris in.

“Welcome to my humble abode.” It wasn’t big, but it was well-maintained, held all the furniture he needed, and always smelled like baking bread, often with a sweet note added on. He checked the thermostat and touched it up to kick the heating in. He usually kept it fairly low while he was home, preferring to wear hoodies and throw a blanket over his legs if he was sitting around, and he turned it a fair ways down when he wasn’t home.

“Thanks.” Chris shrugged out of his coat, and Luke grabbed it, putting it on one of the hooks on the old-fashioned coat rack he’d found in the trash a couple years back. He shoved his own hat, mitts, and scarf into the arm of his own coat and hung it up as well.

He shivered and rubbed his hands together. There was often residual heat coming up from the bakery, but they’d been closed all evening today, so he wasn’t surprised it was fairly cold in here. “There’s blankets on the couch. I think some hot chocolate is in order, eh?”

“You don’t need?—”

“Of course I don’t need to,” Luke interrupted. “But I’m going to.”

He made his way into the kitchen and put a saucepan on the stove before grabbing the milk from the fridge.

“I think hot chocolate tastes way better made with milk than water,” he told Chris, who had followed him.

“I can help,” Chris told him, but Luke shook his head.

“Nothing much to do. I make the chocolate mix up in batches, so there’s always some in the fridge.” He grabbed two large mugs from the cupboard and filled them with milk, then transferred the milk to the pan and turned the heat on under it. “Oh, you could see if you can find the mini marshmallows. They should be in that cupboard on the far right. Unless you don’t like marshmallows in your hot chocolate.” The way he said it made it clear that he would be judging Chris on his reply.

“I do.”

“Oh good. Otherwise, I might have had to take away your Santa badge,” Luke teased, grabbing the tupperware container of the chocolate mix. He poured it into one of the mugs, filling it up halfway, then poured that into the milk. “Now all it needs is a gentle stirring so the milk doesn’t burn.”

“You do this a lot.”

“Oh, yeah. It’s way cheaper and better tasting than the hot chocolate you get at the coffee places. Coffee’s good for waking you up, but hot chocolate is like a hug, you know?”

Chris didn’t reply, but that was okay. The guy wasn’t a big talker, but Luke could pretty much hold up both ends of a conversation on his own. He nattered on about the merits of milk, semi-sweet and bitter chocolates for the mix, bringing in the unsuitability, in his eyes, of both white and ruby chocolate for the job, and before he ran out of chocolate conversation, it was ready.

He poured the hot mixture into the mugs and Chris handed over the bag of mini-marshmallows. There was only about a quarter bag of marshmallows left so he made a mental note to buy more, then he filled the tops of the mugs with the little white floaters.

“Ta-da!” He handed one of the mugs over to Chris.

“Thanks.”

“Careful, it’s hot.”

“I know.”

That made Luke chuckle because of course Chris did—he’d watched Luke pour it steaming from the pan into the mugs.

“Come on, let’s go see if we can find a movie we both want to see.” He grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. “What do you like? Action? War movies? Comedies?”

“I’m not fond of war movies. Or action movies.”

Which was maybe the most Chris had told Luke about himself.

“Okay, let’s see what Paramount Plus has.” And if they didn’t find anything to watch on that, there were a half dozen other streaming services at their fingertips, so it wasn’t like they wouldn’t be able to find anything. “Oh, I haven’t seen ‘If’ yet. I thought that looked good. What do you think?”

“Never heard of it.”

“Not a war movie,” Luke pointed out.

“I’m easy. Really. Whatever you want to watch.”

“Okay.” He had the movie cued up before he remembered the popcorn. So he hit pause and popped up. “Did we decide on what kind of popcorn? I’m thinking lots of butter would go nicest with the hot chocolate, but I’ve got a bunch of flavorings if you’d prefer something else.”

“Butter is fine.”

“You got it.” He grabbed his air popper and put in the popcorn, then filled the little tray on the top with butter so it would melt while the kernels popped. He turned the machine on, returned to the couch, and hit play. “It should be ready in five minutes. Which’ll give us enough time to be done with all the beginning credits, I bet.”

Chris focused on the TV, and Luke took that to mean agreement with his plan to watch until the popcorn was ready.

He kept half an ear out for the popcorn, pausing the TV again and going into the kitchen when the popping sounds stopped. He breathed in happily when he got to the kitchen; he did love the smell of fresh popcorn. The bowl he’d put under the spout was full, and there were only a couple of stubborn kernels left spinning at the bottom of the popper, so he turned it off and grabbed a tea towel, using it to hold the hot butter container as he poured it over the popcorn. He added some salt and returned to the couch, setting the bowl down between them and restarting the movie.

“Thanks,” Chris grunted out a few moments later, and Luke threw him a smile.

“You’re welcome!”

He focused back on the TV, every now and then dipping his hand into the popcorn bowl, chuckling the few times his and Chris’s hands collided as they both reached at the same time.

They managed to finish the bowl before the movie was even half over, and he sipped at his hot chocolate until it was gone too. The movie was good fun, and pretty sweet all in all, and by the time it was finished, he was totally unwound from work and figured he could probably get to sleep now.

He smiled over at Chris, who looked like he was half asleep. “Look, it’s late and it’s pretty cold outside.” The wind chose that moment to howl and make the windows rattle a little like it was emphasizing his point. “Why don’t you stay the night. The couch is pretty comfy, if I do say so myself, and I have the extra blankets.”

He half expected Chris to grump and tell him no, and it was long enough before Chris answered that he was sure that was going to happen.

“Okay.”

He nearly fell off the couch he was that surprised at the answer. Instead, he bounced up to go get one of the pillows from his bed and a couple of blankets. “Cool. We can do pancakes for breakfast.”

He grabbed the bedding and headed back into the living room to give them to Chris. “I don’t have an extra toothbrush, but I do have mouthwash, so feel free to help yourself to that. The bathroom is the first door on your right down the hallway.” He went over and pulled the curtains closed. They weren’t great at banking the light, but he figured it didn’t get bright too early this time of year and it wasn’t likely to be sunny either.

He didn’t have people over often, especially not overnight, and he wasn’t quite sure what the etiquette was. Did he just go to bed? He thought so. “Okay, well, have a good night!”

He was almost at his door when he thought he heard a quiet, “Thanks,” from Chris, but it could have been his imagination.

Despite the weirdness of having someone in his living room overnight, he fell asleep surprisingly easily.