Page 18 of A Little Christmas: Star
“I know you’re looking for some magical answer on how to make all this work, and I don’t have that. I don’t think anybody does. But what I do know is that you two have been through this before. You saw your pitfalls, and you talked about them already. That means a lot. It means you have a much better chance this time of making it through.”
“A better chance, but not…” I couldn’t even finish the sentence.
“There are no guarantees in life,” she continued. “My best advice for you is for you to both keep your lines of communication open and be ready to adjust. It’s going to be rough, but you’ll figure it out if it’s meant to be.”
“And if it’s not…
“I think we both know it is.” She winked.
That last small bit of encouragement was exactly what I needed to hear. She was right. I did know we were meant to be, and my job now was to make sure we kept our communication open. I was going to be available for him on his timetable, because at least in this season of our lives, I was the one with the flexibility. That might not always be the case, but for now, I was going to work with what we had.
We’d need to figure out what our long-term answers were, but for now, this was enough. It had to be. It was all that we had.
Chapter Fourteen
Star
Being back home was usually my favorite thing. It meant I had my own bed, my own stuffie, and my own cactus. I knew my way around, the best ways to avoid the local paparazzi, and didn’t have to worry about random housekeepers coming in at the most inopportune times as inevitably happened in hotels.
This time was different, though. This time, it didn’t feel like home. Maybe it never did. Only now, I knew what home felt like. It felt like being wrapped in Caelum’s arms, and he was hundreds of miles away, doing his insurance work, hanging out with his friends, and living his everyday life…without me.
We still talked often, although there were days when he talked to Davis more than me. How sad was it that I got jealous of my assistant? But I did.
And the part that bugged me the most was that the majority of what I was doing was voice-over work, and that could be done at any studio. And obviously, studio space cost money. In this case, it was money I’d have gladly given up to be able to spend the nights wrapped in Daddy’s arms. If only that were an option.
I couldn’t exactly ask for what I wanted, though, even if it was as easy as renting a studio. I’d never hid my sexuality from the fans or the people I worked with—that wasn’t who I was. But not hiding my sexuality was a different reality from throwing Daddy into the deep end, where he’d suddenly lose all privacy. I wasn’t willing to do that. I could only imagine the number of calls his office would get from people wanting to get close to him for a glimpse of me. That sounded like I had some sort of complex or bloated sense of my worth, but it was just the reality of my job and I hated it.
I came home from work later than I wanted to, with two bags ofwhatever we got leftfrom the deli on the corner. The first time I saw the bags in the cooler with the writingwhatever we got lefton them, I was so confused. But then I learned that at the end of the day, about an hour before closing, they just bagged up salads, packing them together with sandwiches and random foods they didn’t keep overnight. People would buy them for a discount rate and you got what you got and you didn’t throw a fit. The fit part was clearly stated on a bright-orange sticker placed on each bag.
I’d been scared the first time I picked one up. There were so many things that could’ve been gross in it. Not actually gross, the place was great, but I tended to be picky with my food, especially salads. But now that I’d bought them semi-regularly, I thought of each one as an adventure. On days I wanted to be less adventurous, I’d buy a couple. That way, there was bound to be something I liked.
My phone rang before I even set my keys down. When I pulled it out of my pocket and saw who it was, the world felt right again. I accepted the video call to see Caelum’s smiling face.
“Hey, sweet boy. You just getting home?”
It was so great to hear his voice.
“How’d you know, Daddy?”
“You still have your jacket on.”
“Oh, hold on.” I set the phone up on the table so that I was still in view and took off my jacket. “It was a long day, but I got to the deli in time for thewhatever we got leftbags.”
“Ooh, are you going to do an unboxing for me?”
I rolled my eyes, not because he was asking what was in the bags—I’d gladly share that with him—but because he was referencing the over-the-top number of PR boxes people kept trying to send me, or sometimes sent without asking first.
When it first started, I told Davis it was a perk of his job to keep all of them. He got boxes of candy, foods from around the world, books, colognes, and health-and-beauty products. The list went on and on. I wasn’t sure what he did with them all. Maybe kept them or gave them away to family and friends or possibly sold them. It didn’t matter, as long as I wasn’t the one who had to deal with them.
One thing was absolute. I wasn’t going to be doing unboxing videos for companies, especially not ones I either declined or was never asked about. At first, I felt like a dick about it, but my time was limited, and I wasn’t a content creator, nor did I want to be one.
“I’m going to open this for you because I bet it’ll make you so jealous, you’ll fly out here.” Neither would happen. If Daddy wanted decent deli food, he’d have already picked it up, and flying out here on a whim wasn’t exactly in either his tax bracket or his schedule.
“Don’t tempt me, sweet boy, because I would.”
I believed that he wanted to be here. And if I thought I’d be able to spend any amount of time with him, I’d ask him to. But this was the busiest time of year for his job being open season. It was best for us to just do what we were doing, at least for now.
I had a lot of ideas going through my head on how to make this work between us, one of them including switching the kind of opportunities I said yes to. Until I had a firmer notion, I didn’t want to discuss it too much. I didn’t want to get either of our hopes up in case nothing came of them.
