Les and Sly embark on separate holiday road trips from Phoenix back home to Chicago. Neither knows that the magic of the season will intervene to make them lovers by the time the parallel journeys are over.
Both Les and Sly are still aching from recent breakups, and they vow to avoid romantic entanglements for the foreseeable future. Fate has other plans. By the time they unexpectedly cross paths for a third time, they suspect it might be more than a coincidence.
Good-natured happy-go-lucky Les is great at friendships and a failure at love. He moved to Phoenix to stick by his best friends and immediately jumped into another painful dating relationship that ended in a parking lot Christmas tree market.
Sly is eager to leave one of the worst years of his life behind. The end of a two-year romance and the death of his stepfather cast a cloud of gloom over his December. He decides to visit his mom in Chicago for a bit of guaranteed Christmas cheer.
On the Road to Christmas is a 40,000-word holiday romance. It features Christmas carols, Cadillac Ranch, lots of cookies, and a magical boost from Santa Claus.
An earlier version of On the Road to Christmas was published under the title Love for Christmas by Grant C. Holland. The book has been revised, updated, and expanded for re-release.
ONE
LES
I already missed the snow even though it was early in the season back home in Chicago. I daydreamed about those big fluffy snowflakes that drift down past the streetlights all night long until you wake up under a fresh blanket of six inches of white.
The last time Phoenix recorded measurable snow was back in 1937. It wasn’t likely to happen in the current year or—with climate change—any year in the near future. A white Christmas would be an Arizona miracle.
I fiddled with the radio dial in my boyfriend Dave’s car and tried to find a commercial-free Christmas station. Dave was an Ebenezer Scrooge in training and grumbled, “I can’t believe they started playing stupid Christmas carols two weeks before Thanksgiving this year. I call it Santa creep—it’s like a disease. We need a vaccine or maybe an anti-Claus spray.”
While I ignored the trashing of my favorite holiday of the year, I found the right station and smiled broadly. The strains of “Let It Snow” filled the car.
I surprised myself when I fought back vigorously against Dave’s opinion a few seconds later.
“Come on, now. Have the holiday spirit! I still say we should decorate a Joshua tree in the living room. That sounds more like an Arizona Christmas to me. Evergreens are for the places where they grow.”
My boyfriend’s expression grew darker as he scowled in response to my suggestion.
I didn’t want to provoke a fight, but it looked like the storm clouds were gathering. Ten minutes earlier, Dave explained that he had a rough day at work. To my ears, it was rough day #53 in a row. That might be a slight exaggeration, but it felt like that.
When we first met, he was bright, cheerful, and, frankly, sexy as hell. Three months later, our dating honeymoon ended, and we found ourselves in a no man’s land of ugly bitterness and strife.
Speaking like an authority on the holiday customs of the whole U.S.A., I said, “In the part of the country with snow on the ground in the winter, you can get family and friends together, hike out into a tree farm’s woods, and cut your own tree down. It’s a celebratory experience.”
“In the freezing cold. I say those people are insane.”
Dave’s opinion didn’t stop me.
“The upside to the adventure in the woods is that you don’t have to pick your tree out from a pile of net-wrapped bundles of branches on a strip mall parking lot. It’s fresh from growing in the sunshine and fresh air. Not that I’m criticizing.”
When he pulled up to stop at a busy intersection, Dave turned his head to stare directly at me. I recognized the annoyance in those grey-blue eyes. They looked at me full of pure lust when we first met, but in recent weeks, more often than not, I only saw frustration when I looked back.
He said, “Tell me again why you moved to Phoenix, Les. We can drive out to the edge of the city to cut down a Christmas tree, but why? How would that make any earthly sense when there are plenty of trees right here in the city. This is convenient, and they mostly look the same anyway.”
“Tradition.”
Dave’s voice dripped with scorn as he explained himself. “My idea of the holiday tradition is to drive up to the lot, look at all the nice little trees, have the staff shake off the needles, and cart the specimen home. We set it up on the tile floor so we can easily vacuum up the needles after we carry the tree carcass out to the curb on December 26th for the neighborhood recycling pickup.”
It was our first holiday season as a couple, and he approached it like a shop owner setting up the perfect store window in a neighborhood without any shoppers. He didn’t like Christmas parties, and he didn’t celebrate with family. The guests would be likely to disturb the decorations.
When I grew up, keeping pets and kids from knocking things awry when retrieving thrown Nerf balls from the Christmas tree branches was part of the fun. We even had a cat that liked to sleep halfway up in the branches. She’d lie there and lazily bat her paw at the ornaments. The idea of making the holiday look perfect for a magazine photo layout was lost on me.
I was used to the glorious sloppiness of Christmas with family and friends more concerned about togetherness than hanging Christmas lights in perfect symmetry or vacuuming up the needles shed by the tree first thing on the morning after.
Dave’s cranky attitude sent me into a dull grey mood. Anger wasn’t the reason for feeling like that. It was more like I had an ache that tugged everything down. Somehow, I recovered enough to answer the question about moving to Arizona.
“I moved to Phoenix for the weather.”
It was only a half-truth. I knew the whole truth would make me vulnerable to another tongue lashing, and I didn’t want to catch it on the Christmas tree lot.
The truth was I didn’t move to Phoenix from the northern Midwest for the best reasons. I trailed after my best friend, Jensen, when he followed a job promotion and brought his new partner, Alec, along.
I imagined myself in the role of the enchanted godfather given the mission of looking out for my two favorite people in the world. They were a great couple, but they had rough patches, too. Alec could be moody, and Jensen could be overly sensitive.
My sunny attitude stopped more than a few hurt feelings and misunderstandings from turning into emotional upheavals.
At least, that’s the story I liked to tell myself. When I let reality sink in before falling asleep at night, I knew that my primary reason for leaving the Midwest was one big hunk of fear of loneliness.
Dave steered the car into a parking lot next door to a nondescript strip mall. Racks of Christmas trees in sizes ranging from five feet tall to towering over ten feet took up half of the usual parking spaces.
I tried to regain the joyful spirit of the holiday and chirped, “Firs, pines, and cypress, oh my!”
Dave didn’t even crack a smile. “Scotch pine is what we’re after. They hold their needles the best. That means a lot less clean up.”
I looked around as I followed Dave to the rear of the lot. Two employees dressed as elves were busy assisting customers. They wore embroidered nametags on the backs of their stretchy green outfits.
It was showtime for Rudy and Binx, two college-age elves who looked impressive in tights. I didn’t dare let my gaze linger long on them while at Dave’s side, but a glance at their muscular physiques was worth it.
The mellow tones of “O, Christmas Tree” piped through tinny speakers drifted through the air, and my mood brightened.
Dave pointed at a short, squat tree near the end of the row of options. “This one. It’s perfect.”
I countered by pointing at a potential choice with short needles on the opposite side. “Or that one. He looks lonely. Christmas is the season to cure those ills. Nobody should have to suffer during the holidays.”
Dave brought my spirit back down to earth again as he rolled his eyes. “Sometimes, Les, your comments like that are cute. Tonight, they’re not. My head’s hurting. Christmas trees don’t get lonely. They’re dead plants—mere objects.”
While Dave hunted for one of the elves to assist us and shake the needles off his chosen tree, I heard raised voices one row away. A shrill female voice insisted, “We ALWAYS get a Balsam! For the love of God, this year, let’s try something different.”
Then I heard the dreaded “T” word as a masculine voice rumbled in response. “What is Christmas about? It’s about tradition. And what does that word mean? Tradition doesn’t mean different. A balsam is a perfect tree.”
Binx appeared, trailing behind Dave. Binx’s body had a muscular V-shape from the rear, and from the front, his green elf costume stretched tight across his broad chest. I pictured him racing on the college swim team in the skimpiest of well-packed speedos when toy construction season ended.
“This one here,” said Dave.
While Binx hefted the little pine over his shoulder, I trailed behind Dave.
As we neared the car, I heard the frustrated woman again. “You know what’s traditional? Those God-awful burnt nut bars your mother calls tasty. I’ll make you three dozen of those as my contribution to Christmas baking. Let’s revel in family traditions. Maybe I’ll make her God-awful stuffing for Christmas dinner, too.”
“C’mon, Les, Binx will have us out of here in less than five more minutes, and sheesh, I hope that’s never us.” He shook his head. “Arguing at the Christmas tree lot. How far from the holiday spirit can you get?”
I hoped Dave couldn’t hear it, but I had to get my reaction out of my head. If I didn’t, it would fester like an open sore and threaten to explode as we climbed in bed at midnight. I might die in bed from bleeding inside my brain.
I dropped my voice to a whisper and said, “You would know the answer to that question better than me.”
Binx had a handy machine to shake off the needles and then a second one that wrapped the tree tight in a plastic mesh. It all reminded me of the shrink-wrapped vegetables at the cut-rate grocery store. They never looked as delicious as the ones I got to rummage through and pick out on my own.
Dave turned toward me. “Can you heft the tree over your broad shoulder to carry it to the car? It’s a good use of those muscles. While you’re doing it, I’ll pay.”
I wasn’t excited about pine needles scratching against the side of my face, but I didn’t want to cross my boyfriend in the Christmas tree lot. It wouldn’t be suitable for the holidays.
I said, “Uh—okay—yeah, that’s fine.”
“We can set it up in the water tonight, and then tomorrow evening, we’ll decorate it after the branches relax. You aren’t busy tomorrow—are you?”
Binx’s face looked more queasy than cheerful as he watched the exchange. He saved me from the annoying task and said, “I’ll carry it to your car. We offer that service with a smile.”
The helpful ripped elf dutifully showed off a mouthful of bright, white, straight teeth that would make an orthodontist proud.
I said, “Jensen and Alec invited us over for dinner tomorrow night. It’s a mini-Christmas party for Bailey. I think it’s the sweetest idea, and I’ve already wrapped a gift from us. I put the party on our shared Google calendar. Didn’t you notice?”
Dave’s forehead furrowed as he offered his credit card to the clerk for checkout, and Binx stood quietly by my side with the tree over his shoulder.
“Isn’t Bailey their dog?”
“Yep, he’s their golden retriever. You’ve met him. It’s his first Christmas with Jensen and Alec. They wanted to do something special.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
Binx winced noticeably.
I recoiled like a pup after a thump on the tip of his nose. I followed Dave to the car in silence. We tied the tree to the top, and I pulled the twine tight, attaching the greenery to the ski rails. Satisfied with my binding work, I said, “I don’t think it’s going anywhere.”
Dave shared more Christmas wisdom. “A real tree is almost too much of a bother, but I need somewhere to hang Grandma’s antique ornaments, and the women from work always coo over a real tree when they see the photos on the phone. I wouldn’t hear the end of it if I skipped out on having a tree altogether.”
I looked over the top of the car and the bulk of the tree and contemplated his expression. Something began to snap inside. It happened without warning. It was like a movie when the camera focuses on a crucial rope that’s starting to fray. You’re on the edge of your seat as the next fibers break.
I asked, “And do you like decorating at all?”
Dave merely shrugged and climbed into the driver’s side of the vehicle while the next fiber broke. I thought I heard the Christmas tree sigh and watched its branches go limp in the plastic mesh package.
The ride back to my boyfriend’s house didn’t improve anything. He asked, “What’s the deal with all of this attitude from you? I thought you said you liked the holidays.” Snap—snap—snap—the rope was getting dangerously thin.
I fiddled with the radio dial again until I heard Mariah Carey singing her heart out. I tried not to sound too defiant when I insisted, “I love Christmas. Ask my friends. Ask my family. It’s you that I’m worried about. If it’s not perfectly wrapped up in plastic or eighty years old made with real feathers and crystals, it’s not worthy of an authentic holiday to you.”
After I delivered my monologue, I didn’t wait for an answer. I leaned my head back, closed my eyes, and sang along with Mariah in my dreadful croak of a singing voice.
Five minutes later, we reached the edge of Dave’s neighborhood. As he turned onto his street, he said, “I could do it all without you. I’ve done it for five years that way. Is that what you want?”
He intended it as a threat, but I heard opportunity.
In my head, I saw the sands in the hourglass of our relationship running on empty. Only a few grains remained. I debated whether to try and turn the hourglass over to start again, and then I shifted in my seat and saw Dave’s nasty scowl.
In my head, I began to cheer for the falling grains. The last grain rattled in the neck of the hourglass before it finally rested on a snow-white pile of sand.
“You can’t even answer the question.” His voice was loud and shrill. He got that way when I deviated from prescribed plans. “I’m taking you home.”
I didn’t attempt an answer. Instead, I nodded and closed my eyes. I imagined a Christmas date who looked like anyone but Dave.
While the car rumbled along with the tree still attached, I thought about my initial attraction. It was absurd. I swooned because he reminded me of Jensen—my current best friend and former boyfriend. Our romantic relationship lasted for three crazy dates six years ago.
I mouthed an alternative version of Mariah’s words to myself, “All I want for Christmas is….not Dave.”
As he pulled up to the curb in front of my apartment building, he didn’t offer a kiss. He didn’t even turn his head. I didn’t get “Happy Holidays” and certainly no, “I’m sorry.”
Without hesitating, I pulled my ass out of the car and said, “Later, Dave.”
He muttered, “Much later,” as I closed the door behind me.
I wasn’t angry, and I wasn’t numb. I was only me. It was perhaps my best and most intelligent breakup yet. As I settled on the sofa in my apartment and dug the Charlie Brown Christmas special out of my DVR, I texted Jensen. It read:
“And so it ends.”
His reply made me smile for the first time in hours. Elsewhere in Phoenix, the Christmas spirit was burning bright. Jensen said:
“We’re baking cookies! Get your ass here quick! Bailey gets his own batch.”
TWO
SLY
It was already one hell of a crazy year, and it wasn’t over yet. I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror. I’d spent much of the past eleven months holding on with a white-knuckled grip, feeling like I was in the last car of a roller coaster whipping around every curve. The dark circles etched under my eyes told the short version of the story.
I thought I’d managed to survive the worst after June came to an end. Unfortunately, fate was just warming up. My two-year dating relationship ended as I stared up at Fourth of July fireworks with Randy.
When a giant red and white shell exploded, he said, “Sly, I don’t think this is going to work.” For the first time in six months, that night, I slept alone.
The next four months featured a long string of bad ideas and mediocre conversations disguised as dates. At Thanksgiving, as we went around the table, I blurted out to my adopted family, my stepdad’s sisters, sons, and daughter, “I’m thankful for my new dating ban. No ridiculous nights out or mysterious bodies in my bed for at least six more months.”
Everyone at the table sat in stunned silence until Granny Foster dropped her fork. I always wondered why my contemporaries in the family didn’t call her Great-Granny Foster. It was an accurate description of the relationship, but I think she’d been Granny to almost everybody for so long that no one thought specifics were important.
After the fork clanged on the good china, my step-sister Sandy said, “Well, okay. Will somebody pass the turkey?”
I was initially an imperfect, uncomfortable fit with my step-family when Mom and I first moved to Phoenix. They pegged me as a rebel with my tattoo sleeve, leather jacket, and penchant for blatant honesty at the most awkward of times.
The more accurate label for me was a romantic dreamer. I wore the leather jacket to remind me of my treasured fantasies of escape from the unfair, disagreeable world I found myself inhabiting far too often. I fashioned myself a spiritual successor to the likes of Jack Kerouac and James Dean.
In the end, Granny Foster and all the rest loved me, and they laughed at the lively stories I told them about a life most of them only saw on TV. The divergence from their experiences began when I talked about being born to a father who was—in his mind—a businessman. In the assessments of others, he was a petty grifter. He was the antithesis of my stepfather.
The life of crime eventually caught up to Dad, and he was spending middle age making license plates in Montana.
Two years before his arrest and conviction, Dad left Mom and me to seek his fortune in the fledgling oil boom in North Dakota. She knew that he wasn’t coming back and had the wisdom to file divorce papers. A short while later, she remarried.
My new stepdad was a world apart from my birth father. Avery Hinton was a southwestern grocery store mogul, and he was one of the most charming and straightforward men I’ve ever known. I wholeheartedly approved of the marriage.
I say “was” because he’s dead. Avery enjoyed slightly less than ten years of married bliss with Mom. He passed on to the supermarket in the sky on New Year’s Eve less than a year ago, clutching his chest right after he blew on a noisemaker.
Avery left an awful, gaping hole in the family and his namesake business. He was the first solid father figure I had in my life. It lasted for almost ten good years, and he was a dependable, authoritative guide on my path toward being a good man like him. As I mentioned, his death kicked off a crazy year.
Perhaps it was time to consider being my own North Star.
After nine months of painful grieving, Mom packed up and moved back home to Chicago. She purchased a condominium on Lake Shore Drive and settled in with a small handful of old friends who’d kept her sane during her first marriage. They were all survivors and fought their own battles to emerge in middle age with a better Chicago-area life.
Circumstances kept me in Phoenix. My stepfather’s will made me part of a three-person management team for Avery Foods with my two step-brothers, Martin and Mack. It was a lofty business position to reach before my 30th birthday.
We’re all three good men, but we lack business education and don’t have the most creative minds on the block. After Avery’s death, our first act as new company officers was to declare business as usual.
Unfortunately, the grocery business is dynamic and fluid, and business as usual means the industry leaves you behind. I thought selling food was only about stocking shelves and checking out the endless carts filled with peanut butter, breakfast cereal, and bananas. If we stayed the course and followed the earlier prosperous example, I thought we had it made.
Mack shared the bad news first. He said, “Look at this graph. It’s the year’s sales so far. At first, I thought I was holding it upside down.”
Martin suggested firing all the store managers and starting over. “That’s what a sports team would do.”
I shook my head. “They fire field managers and coaches when it’s the front office brass who should go.” I stared back at Martin until he had to look away.
Mack went looking for solutions to the business troubles in conversations with his high-brow friends. They weren’t helpful. Most of them implied that he was “better” than the grocery business. The remaining few encouraged a transformation to selling upscale foodstuffs. That shift would require expertise we didn’t have, and we didn’t know how to find it.
I talked to the business people who hobnobbed on a daily basis with our desired customers. They didn’t have any good ideas either until one day, I got lucky.
Aldo, one of my gay bar buddies, knew a local advertising genius, and he relayed my concerns. Less than twenty-four hours later, Aldo shared the response.
“Sponsorship is the way to go. That’s what Ken says. You need a sponsor for those TV commercials—a trusted voice. That’s his advice.”
I wracked my brain for suitable ideas. My thoughts drifted from celebrities to politicians, and I even made a few quick phone calls.
It was like dangling an earthworm on a hook while you hoped for a bite. I was ready to give up and figure out a way to sell my interest in Avery Foods when a light bulb suddenly switched on in the dark recesses of my cluttered mind. I remembered something relevant and meaningful from a visit a few days earlier.
Granny Foster, the family matriarch for as long as anyone could remember, was a dedicated fan of automobile racing. She could no longer hear individual conversations with real people well, but for some reason, she heard every word and retained it all when she watched NASCAR on TV.
The rest of the family frowned on her fixation on race car drivers. I enjoyed listening to her discuss the dramas in drivers’ lives, so that left me with plenty of Granny quality time.
Granny Foster had a favorite drink—a Manhattan, but only one a day. On Sundays, she drank it while she watched NASCAR. As I sat by her side wearing my leather jacket and sipping a beer on Sunday afternoon, she pointed at the screen and said, “That’s Porter Green. He lives right here in Phoenix, and the fans love him. His pretty little wife runs a catering business, and they have two adorable children.”
He was cute, too. Porter had dark hair cut short on the sides with an updo on top and a mischievous smile. I turned toward Granny Foster. “Say what?”
She chuckled softly, sipped her Manhattan, and said, “Sly, dear, if you hang out with me, you’ll soon know them all. I bet you could go to dinner with Porter if you wanted to. They all need business people to sponsor their cars. Sometimes the drivers turn it around and sponsor the business. I saw Porter talking about skin cream the other day during the last of my stories on the air.”
After the conversation came back to me, I spent the next day on the phone. One by one, hour by hour, I worked through the phone tree designed to protect a NASCAR driver from the world of nosy fans. Finally, I spoke to Porter Green’s manager.
He asked, “Groceries? I’m not sure anyone’s done that.”
I’d done my homework while waiting for calls back. I said, “Kroger has sponsored NASCAR for years now. It’s not anything new, and working together, we can get Porter’s name out to a whole new audience.”
“You don’t say. There’s something about this I like. Could he talk about the healthy food that you sell?”
“Absolutely—veggies and fish and milk—definitely milk.”
We had a beloved local NASCAR personality hawking Avery Foods on the air three weeks later.
It didn’t take long for the new alliance to have an impact. Sales started picking up. By late October, Mack brought a new graph to our executive meeting. He reported that a “V” shape was better than a downhill slope any day with a massive grin on his face.
With the crisis over in the grocery store business, and no one filling Randy’s side of the bed, I longed for a real winter season like when I was a boy. Granny Foster picked up on my melancholy mood as I watched the cars race around the track on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
Her eyes twinkled as she began to question me. “Wanderlust?
I said, “No, I don’t think so.”
“Lonely?”
“Not really that either.”
Granny turned her head to face me. I felt her gaze like a computer scanner examining every angle and curve. With her assessment finished, she said, “You miss your mother then. Probably as bad as we miss Avery.”
“Heh, you’re a genius, Granny.”
She winked at me and turned the volume down on the TV. “Then go to her. What’s stopping you? It’s the holidays. I’m sure that you can take a few days off from those stores.”
Declan Rhodes is an author of gay romance. He is fascinated by exploring male/male relationships in a world changed by worldwide progress in lgbtq civil rights.
He is based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and loves men, cooking for friends and family, travel, and long walks along the shore of Lake Michigan not necessarily in that order.
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