Chapter One
“Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.”
So true, Alfie thought, as he stared up at the underside of Mrs. Kohli’s ancient Nissan. Poor old thing should have been put out of her misery years ago. The car, that was, not Mrs. Kohli. Alfie adjusted the position of the wrench and tried again, wincing as the metal dug into his hand. The damned nut still refused to budge.
The narration continued, a clear melodious voice in his ear. “Mr. Knightley could not impute to Emma a more relenting heart than she possessed, or a heart more disposed to accept of his. He had, in fact, been wholly unsuspicious of his own influence...”
He smiled as the happy ending unfurled. Good old Knightley. He was, maybe, Alfie’s second favorite Austen hero. But LLB was a big fan, he said Knightley was the sort of guy who’d worship you in bed and always remember to take out the trash in the morning. Alfie preferred Wentworth, though. All that resentful passion bottled up for eight long years at sea? Bring it on.
Someone kicked his foot.
He glanced down the length of his body, stretched out under the car, to where a pair of familiar sneaker-clad feet stood next to his own. Dani kicked him again. “Hey, boss,” she said, breaking into Emma and Knightley’s happy reunion. “Mail call.”
Sighing, he paused the book and rolled out from under the rusting Nissan, sitting up to squint at his assistant. Well, ‘assistant’ was being generous. Danita Da Silva was a good kid; she came in every day after school to work for a couple hours in exchange for his help fixing up the junker her folks had bought her for her sixteenth birthday. If she was lucky, she’d get it on the road by the time she turned eighteen. One of Dani’s jobs was sorting the mail, a task she usually managed without his input. “What you got that can’t wait?” he said, setting down the wrench and tugging out his earbuds.
Dani grinned, holding out a thick cream envelope. “An invitation to the ball, Cinderella.”
Curious, Alfie wiped his greasy fingers on his overalls and stood up. Sure enough, his name was printed in elegant handwriting on the front of the envelope: Mr. Alfie Carter.
His heart sank when he realized what it was. “It’s from Sean and Tejana Callaghan,” he guessed, tearing open the envelope and reading the invitation inside. “Yup. They’re having another Christmas party. On Christmas Eve, this year.”
Dani’s eyes shone. “Oooh, are Finn and Josh going to be there?”
“Well, it’s not going to say on the invite,” Alfie said. “But I guess they might visit his brother for the holidays.”
Finn Callaghan—actor—was New Milton’s only claim to fame. Beloved of teenage girls, and a few boys since he’d come out as bi last year, he spent most of his time in LA with his cute new boyfriend. But Finn’s brother lived in New Milton, and he and his wife were genial, generous neighbors who loved hosting community events like this.
“But you’re going, right?” Dani said. “So you could get Finn to sign my High Stakes shirt!”
“Nah, sorry.” He dumped the invitation on the counter. “You-Know-Who will be there, and I don’t wanna risk another run-in.”
Dani rolled her eyes like only a sixteen year old can when dealing with her dimwitted elders. “Really? You’re still not over that? It was, like, a year ago.”
“And Novak’s still—like—an asshole. What’s your point?”
“My point,” she began, but Alfie didn’t listen to the rest because a text alert pinged, bringing with it a hot buzz of anticipation. Slipping his phone out of his pocket, he swiped the screen open.
LLB: Boooooored
He grinned and replied: This day is lasting forever
“Hey!” Dani elbowed him. “Nobody ever tell you it’s rude to check your phone when someone’s talking to you?”
He looked up, blinking. “Sorry, what?”
“I said— Oh never mind.” She lifted a sardonic eyebrow. “You’ve gone all ‘heart eyes’. It must be Secret Boyfriend.”
“He’s not secret,” Alfie said, smiling. He couldn’t help smiling when it came to LLB. “And he’s not my boyfriend.”
At least, not yet.
He and LLB had been messaging for months, and their friendship was real as fuck. Alfie would fight anyone who said otherwise. What he felt for LLB was important, as important as anything he’d ever felt for anyone. More so, really, because they were soulmates. That’s what LLB called it: two halves of the same soul.
LLB was crazy romantic. Alfie had never known another guy like him.
His phone pinged again.
LLB: You got time to chat?
Alfie threw a despairing look at Mrs. Kohli’s Nissan and rubbed the sore patch on his palm. “I need a coffee,” he decided, pocketing his phone. “You want anything from Dee’s?”
“Oooh, a hot chocolate.” Dani fluttered smoky eyelashes at him. “Extra whipped cream?”
He laughed and reached for his coat. “I’ll even get you marshmallows, since it’s Christmas.”
Leaving Dani finishing up sorting the mail, he stepped out into the cold winter morning. The temperature had been steadily dropping for a couple days and there was snow forecast for the weekend—in time for Christmas, if they were lucky.
He smiled at the thought and dug out his phone, entertaining dreamy notions of being snowed in with LLB, and tapped out a quick message. Taking a break. What you up to?
A reply pinged right back.
LLB: Wishing it was 7pm already.
Alfie grinned like the Cheshire Cat, stomach swooping giddily. He and LLB had first met back in January, on the JASNA-NY Facebook Group, and, as two of only a handful of guys in the Jane Austen Society of North America (New York), they’d started chatting. Twelve months later, they messaged all the time and it was awesome. They talked books and movies but also about stuff Alfie had never shared with anyone: dreams for the future, regrets, hopes, and fears. He and LLB got each other on every level—they just hadn’t met on the physical one. Yet.
But all that was about to change. Because what Dani didn’t know—what nobody knew—was that he and LLB were going to meet.
Tonight.
Anticipation sat in the corner of his heart like a glowing coal, warming him from the inside out. Anticipation and a dash of tension. LLB was smart, funny, highly educated—and he didn’t know that Alfie was a mechanic who hadn’t even graduated high school. Maybe Alfie should have told him, but they’d never really exchanged personal information. LLB said it was better they didn’t judge each other on external crap, and Alfie agreed. After all, who’d want to talk books with an under-educated car mechanic like him?
So their meeting would be a revelation. And the start of something, Alfie hoped. The start of something serious—a real-life, long-term relationship. Love, if he was going to be bold. Because Alfie was in love with LLB, had been for months, and tonight he was going to tell him face-to-face.
The prospect made him fluttery and he slowed down as he replied to the message, stepping to one side of the sidewalk so he wasn’t in anyone’s way.
Counting down the hours—he added a heart emoji and a smiley face for good measure.
It was only when he looked up from his phone that he realized he was standing outside Bayside Books, Leo Novak’s store. A place he usually avoided.
Not a single Christmas bauble or thread of tinsel adorned its window, in contrast to the rest of Main Street. New Milton wasn’t a particularly affluent place, but everyone did their best for the community. Everyone except Novak, it seemed. The town’s resident Ebenezer Scrooge.
In his hand, Alfie’s phone buzzed.
LLB: Excited/nervous about tonight. You?
He grinned like a fool, all thoughts of Novak swept aside as he crossed the road and headed up the street to Dee’s Coffee Shop. As the only coffee shop in town, Dee’s did good business. It helped that she served fantastic coffee and awesome baked goods. Alfie paused outside, hesitating before going in. It looked crowded, the windows steamed up, and he wanted to reply to LLB without Dee nosing into his business. So he leaned up against the wall, and typed Definitely excited. Can’t wait to meet you at last.
Then, whistling happily, he slipped his phone into his back pocket and pushed open the door. Unfortunately, the first person he saw was Scrooge himself.
Leo Novak stood at the counter, hips cocked at an annoyingly provocative angle, his shock of dark hair unmissable. But it was what he was saying to Dee that grabbed Alfie’s attention.
“I mean, come on. Have you seen the sign outside his shop?” There was laughter in his voice, a disdainful smirk. “Alfie’s Auto’s? With that horrible misuse of an apostrophe?”
Dee’s eyebrows rose as she caught Alfie’s eye. “Leo—”
“No, Dee,” he said. “I’m sorry but I require at a least basic level of literacy, even in a hookup.”
Alfie stared, his good mood evaporating beneath sharp humiliation. Not that he let it show, he wouldn’t give the asshole the satisfaction. He just watched with grim amusement as Novak stilled, finally getting the message, and turned with agonizing reluctance to face Alfie.
Merry fucking Christmas.
***
Leo’s phone buzzed in his coat pocket, and he pulled it out while he waited for his vanilla latte, Bing Crosby crooning White Christmas in the background and the air warm and heavy, redolent with the aroma of coffee and spice.
Camaro89: This day is lasting forever.
He grinned. Two weeks before Christmas, and Leo felt good. Better than good—he felt excited about the future in a way he hadn’t in a long time. And it was all because of this man.
Still grinning, he typed back: You got time to chat?
“So you do actually smile then?” Dee’s amused voice cut across Bing’s crooning and Leo’s sappy thoughts. “I was beginning to think ‘moody’ was the only setting on your dial.”
Leo rolled his eyes. He hadn’t made many friends in New Milton since he moved here. Okay, scratch that: he hadn’t made any friends, but Dee tried her best. She ran New Milton’s only coffee shop and was a mainstay of the town with her spikey burgundy hair, pink framed glasses, and nose for gossip. He liked her, despite himself.
“I was just texting my boyfriend,” he said primly, setting his phone on the counter.
“Uh-huh.” Dee looked at him over the frames of her glasses. “This would be your online ‘boyfriend’.”
The quotation marks were so heavy they practically hit the floor. It was an old argument. “You know, he is an actual human being. We communicate online, but he doesn’t live ‘online’. He’s a man, just like me.”
“So he says.” Dee snapped the lid onto Leo’s reusable coffee cup. “You ever heard of catfishing?”
“Oh please!” His phone buzzed, and he snatched it up before Dee could see the message, ignoring her pointed look.
Camaro89: Taking a break. What you up to?
He smiled. Wishing it was 7pm already
Camaro89: Counting down the hours
The message came complete with a smiley face and a pink heart.
In his chest, Leo’s actual heart performed a somersault worthy of a cheerleader at the Super Bowl. Such a dork, but for once he didn’t care. He was in love—he was allowed to be a dork. Turning back to Dee, he said, “You think I don’t know him after twelve months of intimate conversation? I know him better than I’ve ever known anyone.” He put a hand to his chest, pressed it over his heart. “I know his soul.”
Dee leaned on the counter, skeptical eyebrows raised. “But you don’t know his name,” she said. “Or what he looks like, or what he does for a living.” Leo shifted, made an attempt to reach for his cup, but Dee held it back. “That doesn’t strike you as strange?”
It really didn’t. They’d talked about exchanging photos and personal information early on in their friendship, but both had enjoyed the freedom of anonymity—their relationship was a pure meeting of minds, of ideas, and conversation. Unlike Leo’s most recent relationship disaster, born of his bad habit of falling for beautiful awful guys, his relationship with Camaro89 felt fresh. Pure, even. It wasn’t about any of the exterior stuff, it was only about them—two men who’d fallen in love over literature.
It was the most romantic thing that had ever happened to him. And they were about to take it to a new level. Feeling a twitchy smile on his lips, he said, “If it makes you any happier, I’m going to meet him soon. Tonight, actually.”
“Tonight?” From the narrowing of Dee’s eyes, he suspected that didn’t make her feel any happier. “I hope you’re meeting somewhere public.”
“Why? In case he’s an axe murderer?”
“You shouldn’t joke about that stuff, Leo. Are you? Meeting somewhere public?”
He took his coffee from her resistant hands. “Top of the Empire State building. At midnight. I’ll have a red carnation between my teeth.”
“You’re a funny guy,” Dee said. “They’ll put it on your gravestone when this guy turns out to be some kind of—”
“We’re meeting at the Whiskey Jack.” He wrapped his hands around his cup, relishing its warmth. “It’s a pub in Manhattan. We’re going to have a drink there and walk the High Line afterward. Maybe get dinner if it goes well.” His stomach clenched at the thought, bringing a nervy laugh to his lips. “I’m sure it will.”
Dee’s expression relaxed. “Hmm.”
“He’s… We’re good friends, Dee. I feel like it’s…” Well, he wasn’t going to say ‘destiny’ out loud, but he couldn’t help feeling some cosmic force had brought them together in cyberspace, and now they were going to make that connection out in the real world. “I feel like it’s meant to be.”
“I can see it means a lot to you,” Dee said cautiously. “I hope you’re not disappointed.”
Leo gave a nervy laugh. “I hope he’s not disappointed.”
“No danger of that. You’re cute as a button and—” A pause. “And if he’s got any sense, he’ll see beneath that prickly shell of yours.”
She wasn’t wrong. Leo could be prickly. But when you grew up too smart, too sensitive, and too gay for the tastes of most people, you learned to defend yourself. “Is it wrong,” he said, lowering his voice for the confession, “that I hope he’s hot?” He grimaced at his own hypocrisy. “I mean, obviously this is about a meeting of minds, but...”
“But you’d like it to be about a meeting of other things too?”
Flushing, he took a sip of his coffee. “Yeah.”
He hated the thought of meeting Camaro89 and feeling disappointed, but far worse was the idea of seeing disappointment in Camaro89’s face. What if there was just no spark?
Nervously, he toyed with his phone. God, maybe they should have exchanged photos already. Or maybe meeting itself was a mistake. One way or another, tonight would change everything.
Spiked by anxiety, he found himself typing: Excited/nervous about tonight. You?
The thing was, if they didn’t meet, their relationship couldn’t evolve. It would remain static—an intense, cerebral connection. But Leo wanted more than that, he always had. He wanted companionship and love, he wanted cozy evenings on the sofa and passionate nights in each other’s arms. He wanted a partner in life, a friend. A lover.
“You know,” Dee said, “if you’re after a boyfriend you could do worse than looking locally.”
He peered at her over his coffee. “In New Milton’s vibrant gay scene, you mean?”
Her turn to smile. “Alfie Carter’s handsome and—”
“Carter? God no. He hates me.”
“Alfie doesn’t hate anybody,” Dee protested. “He—”
“He thinks I’m—and I quote—‘an arrogant, prissy little prick’ who he wouldn’t fu— sleep with if I was—quote—‘the last gay man on earth’.”
Oh yes, Alfie Carter had been an absolute sweetheart at that excruciating Christmas party last year, hitting on Leo with all the subtlety of a truck and then getting resentful and pissy when Leo hadn’t been interested. And he hadn’t been interested, despite Carter’s smoldering good looks—or maybe because of them.
Truth was, physically speaking, Carter was exactly Leo’s type, and he reminded him way too much of his unlamented ex, Grayson Sands. Well, Leo was done with all that. He wanted more, and he’d found it in Camaro89. He and Carter were polar opposites. Like matter and antimatter, they were so different they probably couldn’t exist in the same room at the same time.
As if to prove the point a new message flashed up on his phone.
Camaro89: Definitely excited. Can’t wait to meet you at last.
His heart warmed just looking at the words, his misgivings evaporating. It would be fine. It would be wonderful, it would be everything he hoped for. Because it would be Camaro89.
“If you got to know Alfie,” Dee persisted, oblivious to Leo’s inner dialogue, “you might find he surprises you. Why don’t you come along to tomorrow’s meeting about the Christmas market? I could introduce you. You’ve got a lot in common, and Alfie—”
“No.” Absolutely the last thing he needed was Dee trying to set him up. Besides, he had a boyfriend—almost. Dee opened her mouth as the coffee shop door opened with a jingle of bells, but Leo cut her off before she could speak. “I mean, come on. Have you seen the sign outside his shop? Alfie’s Auto’s? With that horrible misuse of an apostrophe?”
Her eyebrows rose. “Leo—”
“No, Dee. I’m sorry but I require at a least basic level of literacy, even in a hookup.”
An odd, strained silence followed his words. The kind of silence that never meant anything good. Leo’s skin prickled along his neck, the side of his face glowing with the intense awareness of a pair of eyes on him. Jaw clenched against the inevitable, he turned his head to see Alfie Carter watching him from inside the door.
Shit.
Carter’s brows were drawn low over his dark eyes, smoldering with anger rather than interest. And maybe something worse, something suggested by a flush visible beneath the stubble on his jaw, something like embarrassment. Leo winced and for a moment they just stood staring at one another. In the background, Bing had moved on to Silent Night as if to make a point.
Then Carter looked away, breaking the spell as he cast his eyes over the half-empty coffee shop. “Don’t worry,” he growled, “the feeling’s mutual. I require at least a basic level of civility, even in a hookup.”
That stung. Leo was civil. He was perfectly civil! It wasn’t his fault that Carter had been standing there listening like some kind of vengeful Heathcliff at the window. “Eavesdroppers never hear any good of themselves,” he said, aware he may have sounded rather prim. Aware, too, that he could have just said sorry. That he should have, probably. And that maybe he would have, if Carter hadn’t been so damned provoking.
“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” Carter said, coming to stand at the counter next to him, dominating the space without trying. Damn, but the man had presence—tall, broad, and carrying with him the cold tang of a winter’s morning. A total lumberjack fantasy with that square, scruffy jaw, dark hair peeking out from under his watch cap, and long powerful limbs. Carter’s eyes slid to Leo’s and away again. “You should be careful, running your mouth about folks like that,” he drawled. “People are gonna start thinking you’re an asshole.”
“Well…Takes one to know one.” Leo grabbed his cup and headed for the door, wincing as his own words caught up with him.
Takes one to know one? Christ, a quip worthy of Oscar Wilde himself. Pulling open the door, he stepped out onto the sidewalk, the blast of frigid air a relief against his burning face.
He told himself he didn’t care what Alfie Carter thought about him. Or what anyone thought about him, for that matter. He had Camaro89, his soulmate. He slipped his free hand into his pocket, curled his fingers around his phone and held on, feeling his pounding heartbeat start to slow.
Yes, it was okay. Nothing mattered apart from tonight.
When he pushed open the door to his silent shop, breathing in the comforting scent of used books and wood polish, he took a moment to type out a quick message: There are too many assholes in the world. I’m so glad I met you.
The reply came a moment later.
Camaro89: I was just thinking the exact same thing. :)