A Winter Symphony: A Christmas Novella Read online

  “So…you need an answer pretty fast.”

  Kingsley nodded. “I won’t be angry if you say no. It’s not easy.”

  Griffin shrugged. “Fuck, what else do I have to do besides keep him in line two days a week?” He tugged Michael’s hair.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Let me talk to Mick about it. I’ll tell you in a week or two?”

  Kingsley smiled. “Parfait.”

  Griffin met his eyes and looked suddenly very serious. It wasn’t often one witnessed Griffin Fiske being serious. “What happens if I say no? You have a runner-up?”

  “You don’t need to worry about that.”

  “Why? Because it’ll influence my decision?”

  “You’ll sell it,” Michael said.

  Kingsley glanced down at Michael’s uncanny silver eyes, but didn’t say anything. That told them everything.

  “Shit,” Griffin said, falling back onto the couch. “So it’s me or the club folds.”

  “There are other clubs in town.”

  “There’s no other 8th Circle.”

  “And there are very few people I trust,” Kingsley said. “Nora said she’s in no shape yet to take on the responsibility. She would trust you to do it, and so would I. But no one else.”

  Griffin blew out a hard breath. “All right. Let me think about it.”

  “It does make good money. Not that you need it, but it’s been lucrative.”

  “Wouldn’t kill me to have a real job for once in my life.”

  Kingsley agreed, but he didn’t say so out loud. He knew far too many depressed and anxious trust-fund babies whose lives drifted along listlessly, without purpose or meaning.

  The door buzzer sounded.

  “I should go,” Kingsley said. “I believe your Mexican has arrived.”

  He was on his way to the elevator when Griffin caught up with him. “Hey, King, wait up.”

  Kingsley turned and saw Griffin wearing that same uncharacteristically serious expression on his handsome face. His dark eyes were shadowed. His lips were tight.

  “How’s Nora doing?” Griffin asked. “Seriously.”

  Kingsley mulled that question over before answering. “I don’t know. Søren says she’s struggling. I saw her just last night, and she admitted to feeling not quite herself. None of us do, I think.”

  “Is that why you’re not telling her you’re moving?”

  “Søren’s asked me to wait while she gets her bearings.”

  “You know she’ll be pissed when she finds out we’re keeping something from her.”

  “There are two possible outcomes,” Kingsley said. “One, she’ll understand and appreciate that we were only trying to help her. Or two…she’ll beat the shit out of me and Søren.”

  “Hey, win-win.”

  “And you.”

  “Not a win. Definitely not a win.”

  The ancient elevator door opened.

  “Goodnight, Griffin.”

  “Hey, speaking of the sinister minister…” He lifted his chin. “What’s going on with you and Søren?”

  Kingsley only smiled and hit the Close Door button. “I said, Goodnight, Griffin.”

  * * *

  No Rolls Royce was awaiting Kingsley at the curb. He’d been traveling incognito since coming home from New Orleans, and caught a cab. He was planning to head straight home until he saw the glow of Central Park and asked to be let out there.

  He buttoned his wool coat and walked with his hands in his pockets, enjoying the pleasant crunch of fresh snow under his shoes as he strolled on the snow-packed lanes. The park was straight out of an old postcard tonight. It was only one of the many things he loved about New York.

  What was it Nora told him once about leaving Søren? That there are two reasons you leave someone you’re still in love with: either it’s the right thing to do, or it’s the only thing to do. With her and Søren, leaving him had been the only way for her to live the life she needed to live. With Kingsley and Manhattan…ah, it wasn’t the only thing to do, no, but leaving was the right thing to do. For Juliette. For Coco. For himself. He only hoped that someday Søren would understand Kingsley wasn’t leaving him again, just the city that could no longer keep them safe.

  Don’t do this to me again.

  Those words echoed in his mind. Søren had warned him it was the wrong thing to say. And it had been. That night.

  But tonight? Tonight, Kingsley found himself smiling at the memory of those words, the heartfelt pain behind them. Kingsley had left Søren. That was a fact. He’d left, disappeared, not come back. And all the while, he later learned, Søren had been waiting for him, wanting him, even searching for him with a Paris Saint-Germain football shirt in his old schoolbag wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine.

  That wasn’t something a man without a heart would do.

  That was something a man with a broken heart would do.

  And what if Kingsley was breaking his heart again by keeping his distance? Only one way to find out.

  It was embarrassing how much mental effort it took for Kingsley to call Søren.

  As soon as Søren answered, Kingsley said, “What did you get me for Christmas?”

  A soft mocking laugh. “Who told you I got you anything?”

  “Nora.”

  “She’ll be flogged for that. I was saving your present for our last Christmas together.”

  “You mean in ten months?” Kingsley said.

  “Yes.”

  “You were going to keep a present out in plain sight for ten months? That’s torture.”

  “Of course it is. The torture is half the gift.”

  Kingsley grinned and leaned back against a lamppost. “Can’t we consider it a late Christmas gift from last year?”

  “We can. But only if you come over tonight to open it.”

  A yellow cab moved slowly down the street toward him. Kingsley raised his arm.

  “I’m on my way. I need to stop by the house first and pick up your souvenir from New Orleans.”

  “Why am I suddenly terrified?”

  “Because you should be,” Kingsley said. “See you soon.”

  “I miss you, too.”

  The cab pulled to the curb. Kingsley was frozen to the spot, though, phone to his ear. He couldn’t believe what he’d heard. “What was that?”

  “You texted me from New Orleans and said you miss me,” Søren said. “And I said, I miss you, too.”

  Kingsley nearly laughed. “You really do love me, then.”

  “I do. Are you finally getting used to that?”

  Kingsley breathed out a thick exhale that hung in the air.

  “Almost.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  When Kingsley arrived at the rectory, he heard music wafting through the door. He stopped before entering, listened. Was that Vivaldi’s “Winter” from Four Seasons? He quietly opened the door.

  He passed through the cozy old kitchen with its hardwood floors worn slick by time and stood in the arched entryway to the living room. The fire was bright in the fireplace and Søren sat with his back to Kingsley at the piano, still playing as if he hadn’t heard Kingsley come into the house.

  Kingsley told himself he shouldn’t do it…but he also told himself he wanted to do it. He’d envied Griffin and Michael their easy way with each other. Yet he knew that would never be him and Søren. His lover didn’t like being touched when he wasn’t ready for it. And knowing that, respecting that, was a deeper, more meaningful type of intimacy than just walking up behind your lover and embracing them. So Kingsley waited until the piece came to an end.

  Søren’s fingers lifted off the keys, and he rested his hands on his lap.

  Kingsley approached, with loud footfalls. Søren didn’t face him until Kingsley was setting his gift on the piano.

  Søren picked up the black bag. The cuffs of his black, long-sleeved pullover were pushed up to reveal his forearms. For some reason, Søren also liked to play piano in bare feet.
Something about feeling the vibrations of the music through the floor.

  “What’s in the bag?” Søren asked.

  “Just a souvenir from New Orleans.”

  “If it’s not beignets, I’m going to be a little disappointed,” Søren said.

  “It’s not beignets. I can’t have those in the house without eating a dozen of them.”

  Søren pulled the tissue from the bag, revealing a mask in the old Venetian style. It was painted red on one side, solid white on the other, with elaborate gilding around the mouth and eyes. The work of a famous local artist, popular at Mardi Gras.

  Søren examined the mask closely. “This is disturbing. I assume that’s the point?”

  “It might be.”

  Søren put on the mask and was transformed into a strange and mysterious blank-faced figure, a nightmare come to life.

  “Take it off,” Kingsley said. “It’s too bizarre. This was a mistake. Huge mistake.”

  Søren didn’t take it off. He just laughed a low sinister laugh. Nora was right. He was the fucking Phantom of the Rectory.

  “Just toss it in the trash,” Kingsley said.

  “Oh no. I’ll find a use for it.” He set the mask on the top of the piano, where it looked like a face was trying to escape a pool of liquid ebony. “Thank you. It’s good to see you again.”

  “Nora said you were pining for me.”

  “I do not pine. But,” Søren said, his tone conciliatory, “you have been on my mind.”

  “She said you were playing ‘Winter’ in my honor. Why that piece?” Kingsley asked. “Vivaldi wasn’t French.”

  “When I was twenty, living in Rome at school, I went to Magdalena’s house for Christmas. I’d said something to her months earlier about you, how I was worried you might be dead. After losing your parents and your sister, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that you’d commit suicide or drink yourself to death. That night, Magda had me play that song for her on her new piano. As she was turning the pages of the sheet music, suddenly….there you were.”

  “There I was?”

  “A picture of you. She’d hired an investigator to find you.”

  Kingsley stared, wide-eyed. “You knew where I was?”

  Søren shook his head. “Magda was too much of a sadist to tell me. She showed me you were alive, as I’d wished, and nothing else. Besides, I was already in the Jesuits by then, and I knew if you wanted me, you could have found me. All you had to do was—”

  “Call our school. I did.”

  Now it was Søren’s turn to be struck silent.

  “I called a couple of times but never could bring myself to leave a message for you,” Kingsley said. “Too much of a coward to face you. I didn’t know you were worried about me.”

  “Every second of every hour of every day and every night. If you knew how white-hot my anger at you was for disappearing on me without a trace… It took until that room, I think, to finally forgive you for your disappearing act.”

  “You forgave Nora a lot faster.”

  “I knew where she was. I knew she was safe. And she was gone one year, while I didn’t see you for a decade. When I did see you again, you were dying in a hospital bed.”

  Silence again. A deep and honest silence.

  “So,” Søren said as he stretched out his long legs and crossed them at the ankles, crossed his arms over his chest and shrugged, “That’s why I tend to gravitate toward Vivaldi’s ‘Winter’ when I’m thinking of you. It worked once before, playing ‘Winter,’ and then there you were. Maybe it would work again. And so it has, finally.”

  Kingsley took a tenuous step forward.

  “I have a secret for you. It’s not my secret but I’ll tell you anyway.”

  “I’m intrigued,” Søren said and leaned back on the piano bench, arms crossed, ankles crossed.

  “It’s about your piano. Do you know how la maîtresse was able to afford to buy you a fifty-thousand dollar Bösendorfer piano?”

  “I’ve always been afraid to ask.”

  “A wealthy man came to me with some special requests. Nothing she hadn’t done before…except he was the son of a mafia don. You know how she despises the mafia. She turned the job down flat. Then she saw your piano for sale and called me back, said she’d do it. That was when you two were apart because you were being such a bastard about her working for me. And still, she still did that for you.”

  Søren glanced away, at the fire.

  “No piano is worth that,” Søren finally said.

  “You are, though. To her. Now for my secret, one I even kept from myself. All these years, I resented you and hated her because I told myself that you loved her more than you loved me…but really, I think the truth is, she loved you more than I did, and I knew it, and that’s what I resented.”

  Søren said nothing.

  “If not more,” Kingsley went on, “then better. She loved you better than I ever did. A brooding sexual obsession with someone you dated in high school doesn’t really count as a relationship, does it?”

  Søren smiled. “Not quite.”

  “I made passes at you. She made sacrifices for you. If this was a competition between me and her and you were the prize, she should win, hands down.”

  Søren said softly, “It’s not a competition.”

  As if to prove that, he picked up the package tied in brown paper and gave it to Kingsley.

  “This really was going to be your gift for this coming Christmas. If you open it, you won’t be getting anything else this year. You’ve been warned.”

  “Empty threat,” Kingsley said, though knowing Søren, he probably meant it. Still…he couldn’t help himself. Søren slid slightly to the side and made room for Kingsley on the piano bench. Kingsley sat next to him and untied the twine.

  He flipped the package over. When he pulled the paper apart, he knew what he was going to see: red and blue. A Paris Saint-Germain football shirt. Not the one Søren had originally gotten him all those years ago, but a replacement. And every time Kingsley wore it in New Orleans, he would think of Søren and miss him.

  But he didn’t see blue and red. He saw gray.

  Gray and burgundy.

  He unfolded the t-shirt and stared at the scarlet words screen-printed across the heather gray fabric.

  LOYOLA UNIVERSITY

  New Orleans

  The cartoon head of a red wolf peered over top of the college’s name, baring its teeth.

  “What…” Kingsley’s voice trailed off. He had to catch his breath.

  “I am, as of one week ago, on the shortlist to replace Father Juan Domenico as a professor of pastoral studies at Loyola University. He’s retiring at the end of the next school year.”

  Once again, Søren had stunned Kingsley into silence.

  “Apparently I’m a ‘shoe-in’ for the position—a Jesuit priest with two PhDs and nearly twenty years of pastoral experience at my own church. I’ll move to New Orleans next January or February. Just like you said…one last winter here.”

  Finally, Kingsley found his voice, and as usual, it was the voice of doubt. “And it’s going to happen? You can just…make a phone call and leave?”

  “They’ve been attempting to transfer me for years. I’ve done everything I could to stay here, but only because it was close to Eleanor. Close to you. I don’t need this house or this church. I need you. I need her. I need my family. If my family is in New Orleans, that’s where I need to be.”

  “What if you don’t get the job?”

  “I’ll come anyway.”

  Kingsley felt like panicking. It didn’t seem possible that this was real, and if it wasn’t he would never survive the joke being played on him. His heart was pounding like a million horses racing across a thousand fields. He couldn’t sit still. He rose from the piano bench and stalked back and forth in front of the fireplace.

  “If I need to leave the Jesuits and join the Diocese of New Orleans as a parish priest, I will,” Søren explained. “Ther
e are priest shortages everywhere. It won’t be a problem.”

  “What about Nora?” He was almost dizzy with shock.

  “She’ll come, too.”

  “She will?”

  “If she knows what’s good for her.”

  How did Søren do that? How could he make a threat sound so sexy? Or sexy talk sound so threatening?

  He was right, though. Nora would go. She’d said as much, that she would run off with Søren anywhere if he asked her.

  “And don’t worry about Juliette,” Søren continued. “She called me weeks ago and asked if there was any chance we could join you all in New Orleans. She really does love you, you know. One of these days you’re going to have to accept that I love you, too.”

  Kingsley had to sit down. He didn’t even bother looking for a chair. He sat down on the rug in front of the fireplace, back to the fire, eyes on Søren.

  He lowered his head and closed his eyes, breathed through his hands. The floor creaked and he felt Søren sit down by him on the rug. Then two strong hands drew him down across Søren’s lap and fingers slid under his shirt to stroke his back.

  They sat there by the crackling fire, suddenly boys again who would break every rule to be together, even if it were only at night and far away from the prying eyes of the rest of the world.

  “That summer we were apart,” Kingsley said, “all I wanted was to see you again. Then school started and one night…it happened. You took me out to the woods and it was the best night of my life. It feels like that night again.”

  Lips touched his temple. Then Søren spoke three words.

  “You did well.”

  It was that night again.

  Slowly, Kingsley lifted his head. He was still clutching the shirt. He smoothed out on the floor in front of him and folded it carefully and rolled it into the classic “ranger roll,” which he’d learned to do back in his days in the Legion.

  “I should get home to Jules,” Kingsley said. No overnight visits for a long time. Juliette wasn’t due quite yet but it was still possible she could go into labor at any moment.