Epilogue

Anthony sniffed the pink bubbly drink that Martin’s oldest sister, Caitlin, had just put in his hand. “What’s in this, exactly?”

“Just some magic. A special concoction for a special hour.” She pushed up the sleeve of her red flowy blouse and peeked at her watch. “A special minute , that is.” She flapped her arms and made a wordless excited noise.

Anthony looked around the Gibsons’ living room, where family of all ages were milling between the Christmas tree and the fireplace, each trying to out-shout the others. It felt a lot like home.

But where had Martin gone to at this crucial time?

“Gonnae gather round, all youse.” Caitlin’s voice blared out above the festive music. “Five minutes to midnight. Who’s not got a drink?”

Martin’s younger brothers raised their hands, though they conspicuously held their other hands behind their backs.

“Liars!” Caitlin said with a smile and a glare. “Naebody gets two glasses. There’s not enough champagne. ’Mon now, this is too important to be messing about.”

Anthony turned to Martin’s mother, Molly. “Have you seen him?”

She nodded and sighed. “He’s upstairs with Jarvis. Maybe you can convince him to join us? I’ve tried, but no luck.” She blanched, then touched her own mouth. “I mean, no success.”

“I’ll fetch him.” Anthony headed for the stairs, marveling at how Martin’s family still avoided using the word luck when discussing him.

He found Martin at the end of the narrow hallway upstairs. Beside him on a cushy dog bed, Jarvis was “roaching,” the greyhound lovers’ term for this supine position with legs pointing up like a dead cockroach’s.

“You watching him sleep?” Anthony asked, handing Martin a glass of his sister’s fizzy potion.

“I just needed a quiet moment to take it all in.” Martin patted the floor beside him.

Anthony slid down the wall to sit, close enough their thighs pressed together. “Take all what in?”

“Everything that’s happened. You coming here, getting on with my family like a house on fire. Life.”

“Life.” He nudged his shoulder against Martin’s. “Pretty sweet, huh?”

“It is, that.” He gave Anthony a soft, lingering kiss. “Must we go downstairs before midnight? Can we not celebrate here, just the two of us?”

“This moment means a lot to everyone.”

“You’re right.” Martin sniffed his drink, then gave it a curious look. “Fine, I’ll join them, if you promise we can go home directly after.”

“Suits me.” Anthony stood and reached down to help up Martin, who wavered for a moment, though he hadn’t had a drink all night.

Instantly awake, Jarvis scrambled to his feet, then bowed low and long.

“Biiiiiig stretch,” Anthony told the dog, who responded with a proud wave of his curlicue tail.

As the three of them entered the living room, Martin’s mom spread her arms. “You got him! Ya dancer!”

“With less than a minute to spare,” his father pointed out.

“Sorry,” Martin said. “Got nervous.” But the crinkles at the corners of his eyes told Anthony he was also the best kind of excited.

And no wonder. When the clock struck midnight, a new era would officially begin.

The kids started counting down from thirty, which got awkward and annoying somewhere around twenty-six. The rest of them joined in at ten. Anthony took Martin’s hand and felt him hold on tight.

“…five, four, three, two, one!” The last two numbers were shouted at the top of their lungs. “Happy Boxing Daaaaaay!”

“Oh my God.” Martin sank into Anthony’s embrace. “It’s real. It’s really real.”

“Yep.” Anthony held him tight. “A Curse-free Christmas at last.”

Martin squeezed him, then let go and faced his family. “I was never worried,” he announced.

They laughed and shouted, “Aye, right!” in near unison. Since starting his PhD at University of Glasgow in September, Anthony had learned that this phrase, along with Did ye, aye? was the ultimate declaration of skepticism.

Martin’s family crowded in to congratulate him on finally beating the Christmas Curse. No doubt they were as relieved for their own sakes as for his.

As promised, Anthony took him away once they’d finished their fizzy potions, which turned out to be a mix of champagne and Chambord that was tasty in a cough syrupy kind of way.

On their half-mile journey home, they walked with Jarvis along the edge of Glasgow Green. The wide-open park was relatively quiet for a holiday night, with most of its pedestrians strolling instead of staggering.

They passed one of Anthony’s favorite haunts: the People’s Palace, a gorgeous red Victorian museum on the Green that was both for the people—being free to the public—and about the people, with its focus on everyday life in Glasgow through the centuries. The longer he lived in this city, the more kinship Anthony felt between its spirit and that of Appalachia. No one here put on airs or took any shit.

The sky was overcast, as usual, but Anthony didn’t mind. Sometimes he liked to watch the clouds roll in from the west and imagine them made of water that had evaporated from the Shenandoah River. It made his half-a-world-away home feel not so far at all.

But really, this was his home now, in this city with this man, and he couldn’t have been happier. Martin’s family and best mates had embraced Anthony as one of their own, pronouncing him gallus , which was a pure compliment in Glasgow. The city had a phenomenal nightlife—even better than Pittsburgh’s—and its four-seasons-in-one-day weather was never boring, which was all that mattered to Anthony.

“Two years ago right now,” Martin said, “I was losing my mind over him.” He nodded to Jarvis.

“And one year ago right now,” Anthony said, “I was losing my mind over you.”

Martin smiled. “Remember how desperate we were that night? We’d no idea the Curse was already broken.”

“Mmm, I had a hunch even at the time that it was.” They’d purposely not discussed the Curse much in the last year, relegating it to the small, dark corner of Martin’s life where it belonged.

“My new theory,” Martin said, “is that the Curse had run its course before I went to West Virginia.”

“Intriguing. And your evidence supporting this hypothesis?”

“The fact last Christmas brought me a man called Anthony Bello.”

“Oh, that is strong evidence,” Anthony said. “Should definitely stand up to rigorous peer review.”

“Right? See, the mere fact of our meeting means the universe was already making up for my previous calamities.”

“I like that idea. But why? What made you so lucky as to meet me?”

“Dunno. It’s a mystery that may never be solved.”

Anthony gasped. “Mr. Gibson, are you embracing uncertainty?”

“Aye,” he said, “and it feels fucking incredible.”

They reached the home they’d moved into together in August, a renovated tenement flat in an up-and-coming part of the East End. The neighborhood wasn’t so gentrified as to be unaffordable, but enough that there was a decent coffee place. Anthony’s mom sent frequent shipments of apple-cider doughnuts to go with the tasty local brew.

They let Jarvis mark one final tree, then went inside. While Martin made tea to rewarm them after the chilly walk, Anthony pulled out his phone.

For the eleventh time, he scanned the pictures he’d woken up to that morning. The first was from Sadie Flaherty, who’d sent a photo of an antler-bedecked Betty with her paw raised in greeting. At her feet was the box of calamari-flavored dog treats Anthony had scoured the internet to find.

Next, from his Mom, came a dozen Christmas Eve/Seven Fishes photos—some posed, some candid, some posed to look candid—but the last two were his favorite. In them, Vanessa stood with Katrina and their parents, looking like she was having a not-terrible time. Her boyfriend and dog had made the trip from St. Louis with her, and all seemed to be getting along.

Had the family rift healed because of Anthony’s decade of relentless nagging? Or had it healed because he’d been too busy and too happy this past year to continue that relentless nagging?

Who could say? As always, he was cool with not knowing, because all that mattered was his family was whole again. A bit tattered around the edges, for sure, but whole just the same.

“I’ve had a thought,” Martin said as he brought the tea to the couch and sat beside Anthony.

“Does it involve us getting naked in the next ten minutes?”

“It doesn’t not involve that.”

“Go on.”

Martin ran a hand through his hair, looking even more nervous than he had before midnight. “Whether you’re the cause or the effect of my Curse-free Christmases, it seems prudent to…” he drew in a deep breath and held it for so long, Anthony half-expected him to pass out “…to keep you with me for all the Christmases.”

Anthony blinked at him, mentally rewinding the last blurted words. Was he asking… “ All the Christmases?”

“No, not all.” Martin rubbed his neck and peered at him from beneath his auburn lashes. “Just the ones in the future.”

“Oh. Whew. For a second there, I thought you meant we had to time-travel and I had to stop you from dropping that tray of dishes on the councilman.”

“No, I’d never ask that.”

“Because that could cause all kinds of disastrous temporal anomalies.” Anthony rambled on, spurred by his nerves. “Like, what if the councilman, if not for that humiliation, had gone on to be the worst Prime Minister ever?”

“If I recall correctly, he became a pretty shite Member of Scottish Parliament.”

“All the more reason not to mess with the timeline.”

“Aye.” Martin pulled his hands into the sleeves of his sweater and rubbed his knuckles together. “So…”

“All the Christmases.” Anthony’s stomach started doing a jig, and it took every bit of his self-control not to jump up and follow suit. “Sounds good.”

Martin’s shoulders sank in what looked like relief. “Good.”

“It’s prudent, like you said. We wouldn’t want to risk a Curse relapse.”

“Heaven forfend.” Martin set his mug on the coffee table. “Suddenly I’m no longer interested in tea.”

“Whaddya know? Me neither.”

Their journey to the bedroom required more steps than it had at Pockaway, but since none of those steps involved a ladder, it was ultimately quicker.

Afterward, lying in a tangle of cooling limbs, they mused on what and when to tell their families. There was no rush, and it was a fun secret to keep, this decision to stay together come what may, in whatever form that took.

“I love you,” Anthony said, as he did often.

“I love you,” Martin said, as he did half as often but with twice as much fervor.

Before finding each other, they’d both been as frozen as the forest of their first Christmas dawn. Stuck in the dead ends life had left them, they couldn’t see a way through, much less move toward it. But with each other’s help, they were now well and truly thawed, ready to move into the brightest future they could build together.

And build it they would—tomorrow, the next day, and all the Christmases to come.