Three weeks until Christmas

Tom’s schedule devolved into a mess, all thanks to Julie Who Cares. That was the name of the character in The Décor Store’s national Christmas ad campaign. In each commercial, she went through the store looking for the perfect gift for someone most people would give an envelope of cash to, like a mailman or crossing guard. She wanted to find them the perfect gift because she cared so much. The spots went viral, the actress who played Julie was interviewed on Good Morning America, and about six people so far had posted Julie memes on Tom’s Facebook.

Julie Who Cared was working, which meant business was picking up more than they expected. Little-to-no downtime existed in Tom’s shifts. He and Kirsten couldn’t hang out on the pillow wall. One day, Antonio ordered in lunch for everyone, which they ate quickly in the break room.

Tom was exhausted and didn’t have the energy to elbow his way over to Santa’s Workshop, and with the extra crowds, he doubted Randall had any energy himself. He put the book and bottle of sunscreen on his nightstand and might’ve looked at them before he went to sleep. (And he might’ve used the sunscreen to masturbate once. It worked surprisingly well.) He figured it was just a nice gesture by Randall, perhaps a thank you for an awesome fuck.

Tom left him a note taped under the desk with a gift in the bottom drawer. Thank you for the book and sunscreen! Here’s something to protect against any more grabby visitors to Santa’s Workshop.

In the drawer, he left an athletic supporter.

Tom worked the closing shift the next day and didn’t have his break until eight at night thanks to extended hours. But sometime around six-thirty, he saw a familiar guy in a Santa costume walk past The Décor Store and glance inside. Randall smiled at him briefly and kept walking. A group of girls followed him with their phones out.

When he finally went on break, Tom steadied his breath as he felt under the desk and silently cheered when he pulled down a note.

Please tell Julie Who Cares to relax. Santa’s worried about her. She’s going to give herself a heart attack picking out the right gift for the captain of her daughter’s lacrosse team. Take it from a guy who gives out gifts for a living: you can’t please everyone.

P.S. I left something in our drawer that should make this communication much easier.

Inside the bottom drawer, he placed a candy cane pen, Christmas stationary, and a roll of tape. (Not everything had to be holiday-themed!)

Tom reread the note, smiling extra hard at the “our drawer” part.

His shift didn’t end until 10:45. The store closed at ten, but it took the rest of the time to clean up the store and get it ready for the next day, when it would be destroyed all over again. He formulated a response to Randall in his head all during clean-up.

When they locked up the store for the night, Tom darted to the secret spot and placed his response. He also left a box of markers, in case either one of them felt inspired to draw.

And so it went like this for the next week. Notes under desks and split-second glances through store windows. Tom printed out an internet article titled 10 Crazy Things You Didn’t Know About Rutherford B. Hayes and stuck it in their drawer. They never thought to ask for each other’s phone numbers. Tom liked this way better. He hated waiting for a text or email from someone while on duty. He would check his phone once a minute and time would drag and then when he did receive an answer, it would never live up to the anticipation that had mounted in his head.

“What’s gotten into you?” Kirsten asked him, almost one week after Tom and Randall had last seen each other in person. She swept up in kitchenware, and Tom restocked and cleaned up displays.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s like you’ve been in your own world.”

In a way, he had. He and Randall lived in this secret world with hidden rooms and coded messages, like they were spies.

“Are you seeing someone?” Kirsten put down her broom.

“No.”

“Hooking up with someone?”

“No.”

“Rubbing up against someone?”

“No.” Tom did his best to hide any trace of lying. He had wanted to tell Kirsten, but he wasn’t sure what Randall’s closet status was. If she spread the word that the Hot Mall Santa was gay, or even bi, he might even lose his job. Tom also didn’t want it getting back to him that he was blabbing about their hookup. After this week, their hookup didn’t feel like just a hookup anymore.

Kirsten studied his face for an extra moment. She could usually squeeze the truth out of him by staring in his eyes and claiming he was lying over and over until he confessed. She should really be a detective, or a kindergarten teacher.

Before she could continue her interrogation, Tom moved to another section to clean up. The store needed it.

* * *

Tom pretty much stumbled to his car. Working in retail was like picking up after the world’s messiest, most inconsiderate roommate. Customers had no concept of putting things back where they came from. They thought just because Tom made an hourly wage, they could leave the store in disarray. All that reaching, squatting, lifting, and carrying turned Tom’s muscles to sludge.

He sat in his car for a second before starting the engine. It would all be over soon, he reminded himself. The holiday season was a sprint, not a marathon. Just make it to January, and then you can collapse.

While driving out of the mall parking lot, he saw a familiar presence waiting at the bus stop. His red suit glowed under the street lamp. Tom pulled up to the curb.

“What are you doing here?” Tom asked.

“Waiting,” Randall said.

Tom didn’t realize he took the bus. Most people he worked with drove. Oakville was a town that had a drive-thru everything.

“Where’s the bus?” Tom asked.

“You tell me,” Randall said. He kept his Santa suit buttoned up to fight against the cold.

“Does it still come this time of night?”

“I hope so.” It seemed even Santa’s Workshop was staying open later for the holidays. Randall rocked back and forth to stay warm in the bus shelter.

“I can give you a ride home,” Tom said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Tom patted the passenger seat head rest, like this was a no-brainer.

“I’m out of the way from your apartment, I think.”

“I don’t care. You’re freezing. Is that suit insulated?”

“Not at all.”

“You need to speak to your elves about that.” Tom cocked his head. “Get in.”

Randall’s smile gave Tom a blast of heat stronger than what came through the vent.

Once he got in his car, Randall pulled up turn-by-turn directions on his phone to guide him. Now that they were together, in an enclosed space, a sense of awkwardness overcame Tom. They had joked and talked through notes, but would that translate face-to-face? Tom had met up with guys he chatted with online, where they had great text chemistry, but it fizzled in person.

“Thanks.” Randall raked a hand through his hair, which just like at The Wounded Soldier, had not been flattened by his Santa hat.

“Of course. I couldn’t let Santa Claus freeze.” Tom kept his hands at ten and two. “And thanks for the gifts.”

“Likewise. I had no idea Hayes was the first president to use a typewriter! I hope you get to use the sunscreen.”

There was something to his voice, like maybe he could be the one who’d rub it on Tom. Or so Tom hoped.

“How’s it been for you?” Tom asked. “It seems like Santa’s Workshop has been blowing up.”

“My boss said it’s never been this crowded. My arms and legs are sore from holding kids on my lap.”

“And adults,” Tom added, thinking of the fans he saw surrounding Hot Mall Santa. “Adults love you.”

“Yeah. They do,” he said, scuffing up Tom’s confidence. “It’s kind of weird, though.”

“You have Santa groupies.”

“Lucky me,” he said sarcastically. Tom swooned at his raised eyebrows. “All they do is stare at me and ask about Santa shit.”

“Well, you are…” Tom gestured at his Santa suit. “If the hat with the white puffball at the end of it fits…”

“It’s like I’m just an exhibit. It gets tiring. That’s why I like you. We talk about other stuff.”

Did he just say he liked me? Like me in a general, friendly sense, probably. Tom felt his cheeks redden. He was glad that their relationship, whatever it was, wasn’t one-sided. He was able to provide something of value to him.

Tom exited the highway and drove into the heart of Beacon Strip. Beacon Strip was a relic of Oakville’s industrial past. This manufacturing company Beacon had a pair of mills employing thousands of people, and stores and restaurants had sprung up around it. Once the company went under in the seventies, and residents moved into nicer subdivisions on the mall’s side of town, the neighborhood atrophied. Now it was a step above a ghost town, empty storefronts and parking lots with weeds growing in the cracks of the pavement. The only thriving business was a bar, and apparently a motel.

“People actually stay here?” Tom asked when he pulled into the motel’s parking lot. All the times he’d seen it from the highway, he thought it was empty and only used for people to cheat on their spouses.

“It’s not too bad. Cheap,” Randall said.

Tom felt bad that he didn’t ask Randall about his living situation the first time they hung out. He assumed he lived in a neighboring suburb, and frankly, he had, um, other things on the brain that night.

The Beacon Strip Motel was a row of rooms, similar to the Bates Motel in Tom’s mind.

“It works. I got a warm bed and clean water.” Randall shrugged, as if there were nothing else he needed. “I’m only here for a few weeks, and it’s just a place to sleep.”

Even though he was right, it still felt sad to Tom, the thought of anyone spending the holidays alone in a decrepit motel.

“It’s a nice room,” he said.

“It is?” Tom and everyone else in town imagined the worst of the Beacon Strip Motel. “How did you find this place?”

“Priceline.”

Good for Beacon Strip Motel keeping up with the digital revolution.

“Want to see?”

They got out of the car. A light dusting of snow began to fall from the sky. It was nothing a Midwesterner couldn’t handle. Tom doubted it would even stick to the roads. Randall treated it as the most beautiful precipitation he’d ever seen. It was probably his first white Christmas. He held his hands out to touch it, lifted his head, laughed as it dotted his cheeks. Who knew that beneath the raging sex appeal, there would be a layer of dorkiness, and that it could be nothing short of adorable?

* * *

“Nice,” Tom said. Yes, the comforter was about twenty years out of style, but the room had all the furnishings of any other hotel room. It even had a small flat-screen TV sitting on the dresser.

What caught Tom’s eye wasn’t the décor but the string of Christmas lights taped around the perimeter, where the wall met the ceiling. Randall kept the overhead light off and just turned on his Christmas lights, giving the room a glint of magic.

“Wow,” Tom said. “Did you put those up?”

He nodded yes, proud of his design. “It makes the room a lot more festive.”

The only decoration in Tom’s apartment was a fake Christmas tree that his mom had decorated with plastic ornaments and lights. “You have to have something. It’s the holidays,” she’d told him. Being surrounded by the holidays during the day was enough for him.

Tom clocked the gift box ornament hanging from one of the light strings. The sight made his cheeks get warm.

“I didn’t think you’d be so into Christmas,” Tom said. “You have to listen to people ask you for gifts all day long when the holidays should really be about giving. I’ve had customers scream at me because we were out of holiday stemware and how were they going to throw Christmas dinner now?”

Randall took off his Santa jacket, revealing another white sleeveless shirt underneath, and those familiar muscles bulging out.

“I love the holidays. All of it.” He sat on the edge of the bed.

Tom looked at him in disbelief. He leaned against the dresser, unsure whether he had the green light to join Randall.

“You’re not sick of it?” Tom asked.

“No. I guess I’m making up for lost time.”

“Lost time? You didn’t celebrate Christmas enough as a kid?”

“More like never. I grew up as a Jehovah’s Witnesses. We didn’t celebrate any holidays, because most of them have pagan roots. My parents would take me out of school whenever there was any kind of holiday celebration. And I mean any. We’re talking Valentine’s Day-levels here.”

“So you never got a Valentine’s card in school?”

He shook his head no. As trifling and forgettable as they were, Tom couldn’t imagine missing out. He held onto the Valentine’s Day card his (obviously straight) elementary school crush gave him—the same obligatory card that he gave every kid in class—for years. The card was addressed to a Tim, not Tom, but he cherished it just as hard.

Randall’s mouth stretched wide in a glorious smile. “I remember my mother covering my ears when we’d be in the store so I wouldn’t hear the holiday music.”

“It is pretty bad.” The Décor Store played an endless loop of Christmas music that by mid-December made Tom want to bury his head in the pillow wall.

“I was punished for a month for turning our living room plant into a Christmas tree, and another month for lighting firecrackers on the Fourth of July. After they caught me jerking off to a department store catalogue, the men’s swimwear page, they warned me every single day that homosexuals do not inherit God’s kingdom.”

Tom put his hand on his heart.

“Not all Jehovah’s Witnesses are like that. I still talk to an aunt and cousin of mine. My parents are just run-of-the-mill homophobes on top of being devout believers.”

Even though Randall told this story with a smile, there was hurt behind those eyes.

“Once I turned eighteen, I left and never looked back. I wanted to go places and celebrate things. I took odd jobs where I could find them. When I saw a listing for the Oakville Mall Santa, it felt meant to be.”

“So that’s why you travel so much.” Tom sat next to him on the bed. Not because he was beckoned or because this seemed like the right moment, but because he didn’t want Randall to be alone.

“I’m tired of it, to be honest.” His shoulders hunched over. “I’ve been traveling to different states for over three years now.”

“Staying in motels?”

He nodded yes.

“It’s like I’m looking for something, but I don’t know what it is, and I’m afraid I’ll never know what it is, and I’ll just pass it by…” He looked down and shook his head. His face glowed in different colors from the lights above. “I get a bit of inspiration from our former presidents. Some of them were just as lost at our age.”

“It’s not just them. It’s all of us.” Tom rubbed his back. “We’re all figuring it out. You have to give yourself some credit that you’ll know what you want when you find it.”

“You seem like you have it together.” Randall lay back on the bed. Tom joined him. They rested on their sides and faced each other. No touching, but still incredibly intimate.

“I’m good at faking. Let’s see…I’ve been stuck in the same job for three years, and I don’t know when I’ll ever get promoted. But I keep waiting around…” Tom realized how sad that sounded. Why was he hanging all his hopes on becoming a manager? Whenever Kirsten or his mom suggested he look elsewhere, Tom’s stomach tightened up with nerves. He didn’t want to look for another path. He preferred to avoid risk. “But I keep waiting around because I’m scared.”

He didn’t mean to say it aloud, but he knew that in this room, under these twinkling lights, he could say anything.

“And because I’m hopelessly in love with my boss who’s taken and definitely not interested.” Tom rubbed a hand over his face. Antonio was never going to leave Milo for him. “I’ve been playing the same game since forever. Crush on guys I have zero chance with. Although somehow I got lucky with you.”

Randall looked at him in surprise. Tom smacked a hand over his mouth. He might as well tell him his social security number at this point.

“You have a crush on me?”

“I…I have this condition where I sometimes say things without thinking. Like a lot.”

“Tourette’s?”

“Not Tourette’s. I don’t actually have Tourette’s. Just plain ole fashioned idiocy.”

“You’re not an idiot.” Randall took Tom’s hand off his face. He smoothed his thumb over Tom’s fingers, then planted a soft kiss on his middle knuckle.

He inched closer to Tom, his pupils wide and earnest.

“Wait, do you have a crush on me?” Tom asked.

Randall answered with a kiss on the lips.