Holidays in Blue Read online

  Also available from Eve Morton

  Byrd’s Eye View

  The Fourth World

  Self-Care in Space

  October Moons

  The Thanksgiving Invitation

  Coming soon from Eve Morton

  Something from Nothing

  Venus in Retrograde

  Survival

  Content Warning

  This book deals with topics some readers may find difficult, including descriptions of eating disorders, depression and infidelity.

  Holidays in Blue

  Eve Morton

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue

  Author Note

  About the Author

  Excerpt from American Christmas by Adriana Herrera

  Chapter One

  Cosmin Tessler adored Toronto like he adored the beginnings of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. That song, more than any of the Christmas instrumentals playing tonight, was what was caught in his head. Toronto was a blue city, one that resisted the allure of black and white like Woody Allen’s Manhattan and instead appeared like a French Impressionist painting. Toronto was blue, sky and navy, periwinkle, azure, cerulean, cobalt; it still filled him with rhapsody even after four decades of living here. Romania had never been his home. Toronto was. It always had been even if that home had been improvised, like that clarinet piece at the beginning of Gershwin’s masterpiece; it was still no less true, and no less blue.

  When Cosmin turned from the lights of the city, away from the cross-stitched buildings against that blue backdrop, he caught sight of the bartender.

  He paused.

  The bartender was familiar. Yet it wasn’t the kind of familiarity that came from the way all people in Toronto were familiar. Early on in Cosmin’s career, he’d walked by a famous Canadian comedian on the street nearly every single day and not even realized it until the comedian had shown up at the radio station for an interview. That had been embarrassing until the comedian had put the whole thing in perspective: Toronto was a mix of LA and New York City; metropolitan and thriving, yet the stars faded into the background here because it was so normal to have actors walk the street in order to get to the set of a cheaply shot, tax-deductible movie. The Canadian A-list was also quite small. Once you knew two people inside of it, you suddenly knew everyone famous, and subsequently, those who were famous became quotidian.

  Perhaps that was why the bartender frustrated him. Cosmin had, after all those early years of struggle and strife, ascended the ranks in the Canadian A-list, comfortably landing as a radio star with his own show, a few nonfiction bestsellers (in Canadian markets only, of course), and a tenured professorship. He was as blue as the city itself, part of its mosaic, and still looking with the eyes of a wonderstruck tourist.

  Yet he still had no idea who this person was. And that did not sit—or sound—right to him at all.

  The bartender was young, no more than his early thirties, with a medium build and probably an inch under Cosmin’s six foot height. The man’s reddish beard didn’t seem to match his dark brown hair, yet he wore it expertly, trimmed and not unruly; certainly not a hipster beard for a pseudo-wild man. In spite of being dressed in the standard black bartender uniform, he exuded far more people skills than what he’d been designated with for the night. Each smile the man gave lit up his face, as if it was practised, like that of an actor or model.

  Of course. That made the most sense. Bartending at a Toronto office Christmas party on the docks was a gig, among a sea of gigs available to those who did not have steady employment. Perhaps during the day this man was an actor in bit parts, constantly in the background but never a star. Or maybe he was a star, but it was only a show which broadcasted on the CBC, or his face was like Cosmin’s and obscured through voice work. Perhaps all three. Cosmin hadn’t watched an actual TV show straight through in what felt like decades, so even if this man was a lead actor in a new version of Corner Gas, Cosmin wouldn’t exactly know.

  Cosmin was wondering if the bartender was one of his former students, or someone who attended a public reading he gave a few years back and asked poignant questions, when the man he’d been talking to finally noticed that Cosmin wasn’t even remotely paying attention.

  “Are you okay, Cossy?”

  Cosmin bristled at the use of a pet name. His first name was unusual, sure, and people usually butchered it anyway, but he insisted that they keep trying until they get it right. Hearing it aloud so often was one of the perks of radio. If it had been anyone other than Andrew Sullivan who’d attempted to call him Cossy, Cosmin would have walked out on the conversation right then.

  But in this case, he felt mostly guilty for blanking out mid-sentence. “I’m fine, but I’m sorry, Andrew. I don’t think I’m in the socializing mood right now. My brain’s foggy.”

  “Completely understandable by the end of the year like this. And I suppose I should know better than to even attempt a work discussion at a place where we’re supposed to let loose from work.” Andrew shrugged. “But I have to ask: Have you heard the latest news about Stratford’s next play?”

  “No, but please, go on. Now I’m listening.”

  He and Andrew were soon in the middle of a discussion about the recent recasting in the latest staging of The Tempest at Ontario’s well-known theatre in Stratford. Prospero, the main character who kept his daughter on the island in the play, would now be played by a woman, transforming the main relationship from father-daughter to mother-daughter.

  “No, that doesn’t work. The relationship dynamics are different,” Cosmin insisted—only to have Andrew counter him just as fiercely. Soon enough, their drinks were done and Andrew was red-faced with cheer. For a while, Cosmin was able to forget about the panging sensation in his stomach whenever he looked at the bartender. Perhaps I’ve mistaken desire for familiarity. That’s probably all it is.

  “You know, this has been so eye-opening, Cossy. I should schedule you on my show next year. And we’ll know by then whether or not the gender-swap works in ticket numbers and reviews. What do you think?” Andrew was already pulling out his BlackBerry to schedule in Cosmin. “How is February? Would be a good Valentine’s show—unless you have something planned already?”

  Cosmin furrowed his brow. He didn’t have his upcoming schedule because he still hadn’t had his contract meeting. It was already December 19th, quite late in the year, but Sherry Allan, the station head, had been putting off answering his messages about contracts for the past six weeks. At first it had been a personal matter that kept them from talking, and he’d appreciated the distance, but once the Christmas season on the radio began in full swing, he’d expected to be called into her office at any moment. The fact that he hadn’t been didn’t raise his alarm—until Andrew seemed to already have everything solved for his upcoming year.

  “When did you meet with Sherry?”

  “A week or two ago.” Andrew looked up from his phone with a narrowed gaze. “You didn’t talk with her yet?”

  “No.”

  “And you didn’
t go to the staff meeting earlier this week,” Andrew said, speaking aloud as his mind put several pieces together. “I thought that was because of your dad.”

  Cosmin shook his head. His father was long dead and buried in the ground by now. Absolutely zero reason to miss any meeting, let alone a serious staff meeting. Why hadn’t he known about it? He’d taped his last show of the year on Monday, to air tonight, and he’d mistakenly assumed he was done in his duties until next year. He only had to be in the radio station one day a week for a few hours when he was working, sometimes more if he doubled on other shows like Andrew’s Book Talks or The Political Hour. He attended staff meetings as necessary, but it was more of a perfunctory gesture since his show was an easy addition to a radio station that was already a well-oiled machine.

  Or at least, this had been what he’d thought. Suddenly, the Word doc he’d kept full of ideas and snippets for his upcoming show year now seemed like a Christmas letter written to Santa Claus: a complete fantasy.

  Andrew slipped his BlackBerry back into his pocket. Both men cast their gazes out towards the party, soon spotting the blond curls and hearing the boisterous laugh which signalled Sherry Allan. Cosmin’s chest tightened. He was nervous. For the first time since he’d flicked on a microphone and heard his voice over the air in a cramped university office, he was nervous.

  Cosmin left Andrew’s side without another word. They were good enough friends at this point to not worry too much about standard decorum. There was always an in media res conversation they could easily pick up on later. Cosmin’s stomach flipped again when he thought of the fact that there might not be a later—but then he calmed himself. He’d been at this station, in some form or another, for nearly twenty years. He’d started as a reporter consult, and after only a handful of stories for one of the many newspapers in the city, he slowly left his reporting behind for more and more radio work. He’d had every job in the station for at least a week and a half over the past twenty years too, tackling everything from on-air advice columnist to gofer.

  But his true star, and his pet project, had been the late night show he’d started ten years ago called Sleep Alone. It aired every Thursday night from 10 to 11 p.m. and focused on telling stories about lost loves, memories, and anything that felt sepia toned. “Sort of like a Chicken Soup for the Soul audiobook, only less about God and more about human emotions, interactions, and psychology,” as Sherry always said as the elevator pitch.

  Cosmin hated the Chicken Soup for the Soul parallel; he would have much rather thought of it all as an open Seneca letter, targeted towards people who were sleeping alone and wanted to listen to something more than music as they headed to bed solo. Cosmin often picked a theme emotion for the week and explored it through a variety of measures. People often wrote in and told him stories, which he edited down and condensed for better radio listening, or he read from his own collection of favourite stories he kept by his bedside—everything from the essays of Michel de Montaigne to the poetry of Emily Dickinson and, of course, the always applicable William Shakespeare. It was an atmospheric show, kind and soft—a literal lullaby for the single thirty-something, something he’d been when he first started it ten years ago.

  Now he was almost forty-four and he still loved the show, and was still single—along with millions of others in Toronto. There was no way they were going to cancel his show and not renew his contract. Absolutely no way. Cosmin gathered as much strength as he could, thinking back to the show he’d done in early 2008 about strength in the face of adversity, when he’d read from Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Archaic Torso of Apollo.”

  He didn’t think about the suddenly evasive emails from Sherry and the diminishing reader-submitted stories, or his production budget steadily going down each year. His show had peaked, sure, and that was why the budget was smaller, but his work was still going forward. You didn’t just go from once every week to nothing.

  Yet when Cosmin met Sherry’s eyes, he knew the truth. The two had been friends since his first day at the station, when they’d realized they were carrying the same Canadian bestseller tucked under their arms, both using subway transfer slips as bookmarks. She could tell him no lies because he knew all her weakest spots, since they were his own. Her red lips formed a half smile. Her eyes crinkled.

  Cosmin stopped in the middle of the party. Sherry touched the person’s shoulder she was talking to and politely excused herself to meet him where he stood.

  “Hey. How you doin’?”

  “I’m fine, Sherry. Thank you. Please tell me why I haven’t received a contract.”

  “You cut right to the chase. Oh, always like a Band-Aid. Are you sure you don’t want a drink first? Maybe talk about the weather. I hear we’re supposed to be getting a pretty vicious ice storm soon.”

  Cosmin stood impassive. Sherry nodded, understanding, and knowing Cosmin well enough that she’d have to say the words aloud, even if he already knew the truth.

  “Well, I’m sorry to say it, hon. We’re not renewing the show.”

  Chapter Two

  Eric’s phone buzzed. He thought he’d put it on airplane mode before coming to this party, but he’d apparently only muted it. The line at the bar was three people deep. Not too bad—especially for an office party with an open bar—but it was still more people than he wanted. One other gig worker was handling a wine area, while he was the only one serving mixed drinks. Though this arrangement meant far more fuss, it also meant more tips for him. Cameron usually came with him on gigs like this to act as backup for a percentage of the cut, but Cameron had his own gig tonight. They would meet up later to count their spoils. This close to the holiday season, and after such a long dry spell in the online world, Eric needed as much cash as he could grab. If it meant making a couple old guys with thousand-dollar suits wait a bit too long as he struggled to remember the exact spices in a hot toddy, so be it.

  It beat being bored any day of the week.

  By the time the small rush relented, and a handful of fives and twenties were added to his tip bowl, his phone had stopped ringing. He slipped it out of his jacket pocket to check the number. One call from his roommate, Cameron, but the rest had been from an unknown from the general area. They’d even left a message. Eric felt a tremor of fear as he thought of Trina, but soon pushed it away as another patron stopped at his bar.

  “Scotch on the rocks. Thank you.”

  The man slumped over his bar, gazing at his phone. Though he clicked around, he didn’t seem to actually do anything with his device. He hovered over the green icon and by the time Eric put his drink down in front of him, the email app was open. Half-composed and with no sender.

  “Here you are, sir. Merry Christmas.” Eric bit his tongue. Shit. You weren’t supposed to say that now. “I mean Happy Holidays.”

  The man nodded, absentminded. Dark hair fell over his face, which he combed back with a large hand. His skin was olive coloured, tanned even in spite of the grey December days, and matched his dark features. His nose was narrow and pointed, like the severe lines of his chin. His sulking obscured the rest of his features, but Eric’s skin prickled. He was familiar. In some way. If only Eric could see his—

  When a phone rang, Eric startled. So did the man at the bar.

  The phone was Eric’s own; his software must be going on the fritz, the sound turning on and off at will, and airplane mode no longer working. He quickly rushed to silence Cameron’s number yet again when he met the man’s gaze.

  Recognition hit him full force. Though he was so much older than when Eric had seen him last, he knew this was Cosmin Tessler. He stuffed down his apology about his phone and quickly beamed at the stranger-turned-former neighbour.

  “Oh wow. Cosmin? Is that really you?”

  Cosmin seemed disenchanted by being recognized as he slung another drink back. “Yeah. I can’t sign anything, though. Not now. It’s actually really unprofessional
to ask while you’re on the job.”

  “Wait. No. A signature?” Eric shook his head. He was about to chalk it up to his own minor acting career—who the hell would recognize him from that show, though?—but then he remembered that Cosmin was also famous. Kind of famous. The kind of fame that Canada bred, quiet and unassuming. “I wasn’t asking for that. It’s me, Eric. Eric Campbell. Don’s son, remember? We used to be neighbours.”

  Their parents had lived across the street from each other on a cul-de-sac in Whitby, a smaller commuter city outside Toronto. Cosmin tilted his head as he regarded Eric. The years between them became unmade, undone through a pointed stare. Cosmin lingered on the red beard, which Eric touched with practised ease. “Yeah, this is new. Sort of disguises me but I thought it’d be neat.”

  “It’s so red.”

  “Yeah! But I was a blond as a baby, though, so I guess it makes sense. Some sort of recessive genes. My mom’s side is all pale and Irish. I don’t know if you ever met them, though.” Eric had to bite his tongue to prevent himself from saying the pick-up line about checking the colour of his hair below the belt he often added in when he was trying to pick up men at bars. Even if Cosmin was gay, and Eric knew it in the way all neighbours in their cul-de-sac knew it, the line seemed so much more immature than he wanted it to be.

  Cosmin was the type of gay that David Hyde Pierce was: the sophisticated, theatre-going erudite man with one of those thousand-dollar suits. He wasn’t the type of gay who used Grindr or Craigslist for fucks, like Eric sometimes did when he got too bored and the gig-work dried up. Eric was the slutty type, the party type, the “I don’t want to grow up so I’m going to keep fucking people younger than me” type even if he did fear sometimes that he fell into all the bad stereotypes of bi men on TV. No matter what, Cosmin and Eric were fundamentally different. They didn’t match in their predilections, not even close, not ever.

  Yet there was a startling, and perhaps even hidden, part of Eric that really did want them to match up. When they’d been kids and neighbours, Cosmin had always seemed so much more mature, a role model with an edge of desire. By the time Eric was old enough to articulate his feelings and desires, Cosmin was already moved out of his father’s house and taking the world by storm, and had turned into some new age Kelsey Grammer with better cheekbones and hairline. The Frasier comparison was even more appropriate now, especially since Cosmin’s claim to fame had charted a similar path. “You have that radio show, right? Man, my sister was right all those years ago. You really are Frasier Crane. ‘I’m listening.’”