Page 33 of A Christmas Harbor

“Oh.” He looked at David. “Am I free?”

“If you’d like to be.”

“I’m supposed to FaceTime with my family at noon Central,” Paul told Jenna, “but I can do dinner at four. Thank you!”

“Just one condition.” She slung an arm around David’s waist. “You bring our favorite hermit with you.”

Paul grinned. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

As the sun rose higher and the snow grew slushier, David and Paul mingled with the neighbors, discussing the miraculous overnight change in weather, the gifts they’d given and received, what their plans were for New Year’s, et cetera. He was proud both to show off Paul to his friendsandfor Paul to see that he had something resembling a social life, that he wasn’t as much of a lonesome loser as he must have seemed at first.

Last winter, David had missed his Eastport community when he left his boat behind. January and February had been barren, interminable months, away from the waterfront and the people who shared his love for it.

But if he was with Paul—and if David finally managednotto suck at togethering—then maybe this winter would have as much life as last spring and summer combined.

Epilogue

SIX MONTHS LATER

In every direction, the world was blue.

When Paul looked south from the foredeck of theMany Waters, the Chesapeake Bay’s glassy surface stretched all the way to the horizon, where it blended with the cloud-free sky through a smudge of summer haze.

The view to the north—if he shaded his eyes from both the sun and its blinding reflection—was similar, apart from a faint outline sketch of the Bay Bridge. From this distance the bridge seemed hunched, all meek and harmless, as if it weren’t a two-hundred-foot-high monster whose low railing and nonexistent shoulder made Paul feel like he was driving a flying car, but not in a whimsical, George-Jetson way so much as anoh-this-is-how-I-dieway.

Even looking east or west, the treetops on the Maryland shores now verged on teal, as if every oak and maple had been plucked out and replaced by a spruce. According to David, this Picasso-Blue-Period effect was due to the way different wavelengths of light were scattered by the atmosphere at midday. Paul liked to imagine it was because the sea and sky were so powerful here, they could break free of their boundaries and leak onto the landscape itself.

If today were a Saturday or Sunday, the blue expanse would’ve been splattered with hundreds of white dots: boats like theirs—some smaller but most bigger—many of them belching stinky diesel fuel. Luckily, it was a Wednesday, so they were anchored near only a handful of vessels, and Paul smelled nothing but sunscreen and a faint hint of salt in the air.

The sound of clinking bottles approached from the port side, so he scooched over to let David perch beside him.

As usual, Boomer was on David’s heels, gamely sporting the orange doggy life jacket strapped around her half-Dachshund-half-WTF body.

“We’ll have champagne tonight,” David said as he unrolled his towel beside Paul’s, “but you deserve at least one afternoon celebratory drink.” With a hiss and a tink, he popped the cap off a bottle of Paul’s favorite summer ale.

“Hang on. C’mere, Butterball.” Paul reached down and picked up Boomer. Her skinny brown tail thwapped against him as he settled her in his lap, arranging her paws so they wouldn’t crush his crotch. Then he took the bottle David offered. “So what are we celebrating?” he asked coyly, just to hear it out loud once more.

“The end of the semester.” David made as if to toast.

Paul pulled his bottle away. “That was a month ago.”

“Then we’re celebrating you getting a three-year teaching contract.”

“And that was a week ago.”

“Sorry, you’ve had so many accomplishments, I can’t keep track.” David put a finger to his chin in mock contemplation. “Oh, right—we’re celebrating you finishing your book on time.”

“Yyyyyeeeeessss.” He tapped his bottle against David’s. “With your help, of course.”

This statement wasn’t mere flattery. Paul would never have had the idea forWhen They Are Both Full-Grown, aka the Holly and Ivy book, if David hadn’t brought it up on Christmas Eve. And without David’s insights,WTABFGwould never have become the story of two rival siblings—the flashy one who pleases the parents then dies young, and the quiet one who saves the world by staying in the shadows. Paul had managed to turn in half the manuscript and a detailed outline by his March deadline, which had earned him a three-month extension on the full book.

“Now you can take some well-earned time off,” David said, leaning back on his elbows and incidentally displaying his magnificent body, naked except for swim trunks and boat shoes.

“Speaking of which…”

David peered up at Paul through his sunglasses. “Yeah?”

“My publisher emailed this morning to ask if I’d write a Christmas story for an anthology.”

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