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“Nor did I!” Cole said happily, shrugging expansively. Although perhaps, given the breadth of his shoulders, it only looked that way. “I thought I was a Very Good Ally who never felt any romantic connection to the women I dated, no matter how much I wanted to.”
“But you slept with them?” Levi asked, baffled.
Cole nodded, talking around the sandwich he’d procured from somewhere in his bag. He offered half to Levi, who shook his head. He preferred not to eat sandwiches of unknown provenance. “Sex is fun, with anyone. I just couldn’t connect, you know?”
Levi shook his head. He did not.
“I had these big hopes for a great romance, but it never clicked for me,” Cole said. “Then I met a guy. I mean, not in the normal ‘I met someone’ way. I literally shook his hand and he smiled at me. Boom. All of a sudden everything lit up. It made everything make a lot more sense, actually. But it turns out there was a limit to my parents’ tolerance of my behavior, and that limit was telling them I was gay.”
“I’m sorry,” Levi said.
Cole shook his head. “I’m not! My parents suck and being gay is awesome.”
Levi looked at him. “You’re kind of a chaos gremlin, you know,” he observed. Without judgment.
“Well”—Cole pointed between the two of them—“pot. Kettle.”
When they finally made it to Carrigan’s, Cole said, “Don’t think you’re escaping our friendship.”
As much as it galled him, that truth seemed inescapable. They were going to be friends whether Levi liked it or not.
The screech of glee Miriam let out upon seeing her best friend startled Kringle so badly he leapt several feet in the air. It was a hell of a lot more enthusiastic than the welcome he’d gotten.
He was annoyed until the moment Cole said, “So I’m gay,” and Levi realized Cole needed that overwhelming joy right now.
Hannah winked at him and mouthed,Thank you, and he lit up inside like a damn firefly. He would do anything for her.
For her, he was going to figure out a plan, one that didn’t include either of them being miserable for the other.
Hannah, Age 28
Do you want to go to Rio for Rosh Hashanah?” Cass asked from where she’d draped herself on the chaise lounge in the corner of the great room, artfully arranging her feathered robe around her, one arm hanging gracefully to the floor.
Hannah looked up from the laptop she was working on, where she had been playing with a new layout for theCarrigan’s Christmaslandcircular. August was their dead time, and everyone else took it as a time to rest, but Hannah hated resting. Besides, it had been dead during the spring and summer. She was extremely well-rested, and she was committed to making this Christmas Festival their most successful ever. Which started with updating the circular that hadn’t been redesigned since the mid-eighties.
“What’s in Rio?” she asked.
Cass huffed. “Well I don’tknow, that’s why I want to go see.”
She really fucking didn’t want to go to Rio, or anywhere, for Rosh Hashanah, unless it was maybe to the Rosenstein’s home office in the Quad Cities. However, she couldn’t go there because they hadn’t invited Blue.
“I want to stay here, with our family, and spend the holy days in the woods. You know how many holidays I missed because we were traveling,” she said through gritted teeth.
There was no use telling Cass that she hated traveling, because Cass loved what she loved, and she refused to believe everyone else didn’t also love it.
“When I went to save you from that horrid hotel in Budapest and brought you home to be the heir of Carrigan’s, I did not intend for you to never leave again, Hannah Naomi,” Cass chided.
This was absolutely not what had happened. Cass had come to surprise her one summer, then Hannah had gone back to traveling with her parents, before eventually settling at Carrigan’s for the end of high school. Also, it had been a very nice hotel. But the spirit of the memory was true, even if the history was incorrect. Cass had tried to give her a home, not a hermitage.
It was just, if she stayed here, she didn’t have to worry about whether it would be there when she got back. Besides, she’d made a promise and a plan: to never again live apart from Blue. And she was carrying it out.
Actually, thinking of Blue—
“You should take Blue,” Hannah told Cass. “He’d love to go to Rio.”
Cass scowled. “I don’t want to take Levi to Rio. I want to take you, my heir. My protégé. Levi will complain and want to eat at every street food stand and obsess about his hair the whole trip. He’s not anyfun.”
Blue was, by any measure, much more fun than Hannah was. She was the least fun person she knew. Her favorite hobbies were obsessing about the future and filling out varieties of planners. Which was sort of the same thing.
