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  Cover Artist: Freddy MacKay

  Editor: Jaymi E

  First Edition

  A Piece of Ourselves © 2017 Tray Ellis

  All Rights Reserved.

  Published in the United States of America.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: A Piece of Ourselves is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are fictionalized. Any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The story contains explicit sexual content and is intended for adult readers.

  Any person depicted in the Licensed Art Material is a model and is being used solely for illustrative purposes.

  PUBLISHER

  Mischief Corner Books, LLC

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Dear Reader

  About Tray Ellis

  Also by Tray Ellis

  About Mischief Corner Books

  Chapter One

  Tynan Harris realized there would be a serious problem concerning Christmas scheduling as he tipped down the gravy boat during Thanksgiving dinner and Carson's mom casually mentioned attending midnight mass.

  "Wait," Tynan said. "What?"

  Carson's mom, Dodie, frowned at him. She had a round, chubby face that was usually full of smiles but at the moment looked particularly perplexed. "You really like gravy, don't you?"

  Tynan looked down and realized he'd poured an overly thick puddle of gravy all over his potatoes. The gravy ran in rivulets down the potato mountain to leak in-between the green beans, like a marshy flood in spring. He liked gravy, but he'd emptied half the gravy boat's contents onto his plate. Eating all of it would be a bit much. Throwing it out after taking it would be worse. One option made him look like a glutton and the other like a wasteful fool.

  Tynan wanted to stay in Carson's family's good graces. They'd been dating for nine months and things were getting serious. He'd met Dodie and Henry Benedetti, Carson's father, during the summer at a few barbeques and it had taken all summer for them to warm to him. This was the first meal they hadn't been politely reserved with Tynan and had actually opened up and joked around a little.

  "Your gravy is so good. I can't help myself," Tynan said. He would eat every last damn drop of gravy if he had to sop it up with half a loaf of bread to do it. Or spoon it straight into his mouth. Overenthusiastic sounded like a better label than glutton and Tynan would do his best to sell it hard.

  "Well, bless your heart," said Dodie. Tynan couldn't tell if the smile she flashed at him was sincere or fake.

  Tynan set the nearly empty gravy bowl down on the table. "I didn't quite hear what you'd said about Christmas?" He made the statement into a question at the end.

  Across the table, Carson looked like he wanted to slither down in his seat and hide beneath the tablecloth. Carson's right eyebrow noticeably twitched and he pressed a forefinger on it for a moment.

  "Oh, that's right," said Dodie. "You haven't done a Christmas as part of the family yet. We have the most wonderful traditions." Her smile grew truly genuine. "The first two weekends after Thanksgiving are dedicated to cookie making. I freeze them so they'll stay fresh until the cookie swaps. There's a community singers concert on one of the weekends. My sister is a soprano in the group and I always make sure we go to support her. The weekend after that we all take a trip to the tree farm to pick out our Christmas tree and we stay up late into the night to decorate it. I make real hot chocolate on the stove and serve lemon meringue pie."

  "It's the only time of the year I get lemon meringue," Henry added, sounding a little bitter about the lack of pie throughout the rest of the calendar. "My favorite pie and I get it once a year."

  "I don't buy store-made. I make it from scratch," Dodie said. "It's one of those fussy pies. Besides, nobody makes them in the summer. The meringue won't set when it's humid. I've told you that, dear."

  "Hnnh," said Henry. It almost sounded noncommittal, but contained an edge of dissatisfaction. "Winter lasts longer than a month. Doesn't get humid until April."

  Dodie shook her head at him. "Oh hush. I make you lots of pies."

  Tynan glanced back to Carson. His boyfriend was shoveling food into his mouth as quickly as he could. His head was down so that Tynan could see the swirl pattern at the crown of Carson's head. One solitary white hair defiantly sprouted among the rest of the tight, brown, trimmed short curls and Tynan stared at it in surprise. At twenty-six, Tynan didn't expect Carson to have any white hairs.

  Carson didn't usually eat like a starving caveman gorging on saber-toothed tiger for the first time in a month. Except for the grotesque display before him, Tynan would have called his beloved a gourmand. The man loved food. He loved the slow dining experience of each course being savored.

  Tynan and Carson had spent wonderful, long evenings dipping strawberries into champagne, crushing caviar against the roofs of their mouths with their tongues, pairing dark chocolates with lush red wines, or sampling small-batch cheese and varietal honey. Carson hoarded a collection of bitters in the kitchen. He had strong opinions on the flavor of unpasteurized milk and if the cows creating it had been chewing on grass, hay, or—heaven forbid—gotten into the clover.

  Even on routine nights, they often brought something to bed with them to sip as they read. Tynan's favorite so far had been Irish coffee. Whiskey, cream, coffee, and a sprinkle of freshly grated nutmeg. They capitulated to biology and used decaf coffee rather than keep themselves up until midnight, but otherwise, the drink represented a small piece of heaven.

  The whiskey either drifted them off to a gentle sleep or kicked their libidos into overdrive. Sex with the taste of Irish coffee on their lips and burning through their veins never failed to live up to the fantasy.

  On the nights they snuggled together, like a couple together for decades instead of months, they tangled their legs and read. Tynan favored his phone and keeping up with social media but Carson, with a more stressful job, focused on fun reading. He devoured detective stories, comedies, biographies of comics, and an odd assortment of independent comic books and graphic novels. Most of his reading material was electronic, but those comic books stayed in piles next to the bed.

  Tynan sipped at his ice water to prepare for another few bites of gravy and brought his attention back to his boyfriend's mom as she explained her complicated Christmas schedule.

  "Then, of course, on Christmas Eve we have an early supper, open one gift and sit vigil together until it's time to go to midnight mass." Dodie looked blissful as she recounted her Christmas festivities. "After church, we drive through the city center to look at all the decorations and the manger display. It's so beautiful and peaceful! On Christmas morning, we get up early, have a big breakfast, and open the presents. The rest of the family comes over a little later in the afternoon for our holiday meal. We let ourselves rest and then relax with coffee and dessert, find something nice on TV, and exchange presents when we're ready."

  "We watch football," Henry said. He leaned forward and the skin a
round his eyes tightened, as if he expected someone to challenge his assertion and he would be more than ready to rumble. "We always watch football."

  Dodie waved a hand and gave her husband an agreeable smile. "I always forget about the football, but of course we do."

  Tynan tried to think of something to say that wouldn't sound at odds with all of that scheduling. That was a lot of investment into the holiday. Each event sounded picture perfect and tied up neatly with a bright, red bow. She certainly had a lockdown on every weekend in December. Tynan wondered where the space was between all that family time for anyone else to fit in. He was already skipping his own family's Thanksgiving dinner to be here with Carson's family. For a moment Tynan felt like he teetered on the edge of a bottomless pit where he'd plummet into Carson's family, abandoning his own. Then he reminded himself that he was under no obligation to do anything of the sort.

  "Those sound like beautiful traditions," he said in his most noncommittal tone of voice.

  He felt that was true. There wasn't anything wrong with any of those activities. He just didn't want to do all of them. His own family had a few traditions of their own that he planned on participating in.

  "Thank you," Dodie said. "We're so pleased you'll be joining us this year."

  Tynan glanced at Carson who gave the faintest shake of his head. Tynan couldn't quite decipher the meaning of the shake so he decided to continue being amenable. He turned back to Dodie. "That'll be nice. I'm not sure I'll make all of them, but I appreciate your inviting me."

  A tiny frown marred Dodie's features and she pursed her lips to speak, but before she did, Carson interrupted her.

  "Mom, this was fantastic. I'm stuffed. Another great year."

  "Thank you, dear," she said. "It's a lot of work, but I love doing it. I love having my family here." She beamed at the group around her, which consisted of her husband, son, two daughters, and Tynan.

  Carson pushed back from the table and picked up his dish and utensils. "I'll get the coffee started for dessert."

  Tynan looked down at his plate of gravy-covered food. "I'll be there in a minute." He took his cue from Carson and started shoveling in the grub.

  On their way out to the car to drive to their apartment for the night, Tynan broached the subject. In his head he'd correlated Christmas with the color of gravy, a strange mix of brown and white, and very glossy. He was sick of gravy. It was sort of floating in his stomach right now like an oil slick on a lake. "You know, this will be the first Christmas we've spent together."

  "Yeah, I know." Carson thumbed the key fob in his hand. The car beeped twice to inform them it was now unlocked.

  Tynan put his arms on the roof of the sedan and stared across it at Carson. The metal was bitingly cold against his wrists where his coat and gloves separated to make a gap. "Your mom made it sound like there are a lot of nonnegotiable family activities. I was hoping you could come to my family's house for a few hours on Christmas. There's definitely going to be a conflict with your mom's plans."

  Carson sighed heavily and his breath turned to white vapor in the cold November air. He opened his car door, slid in, and started the engine.

  Tynan got in on the passenger side. He leaned back in the seat and reached across to pull the seatbelt into position.

  Carson did the same, but he didn't put the car into gear. "All those things my family does, we do them for specific reasons. My aunt sings in the concert and we want to support her. We go to midnight mass because there's not enough time in the morning to go to mass and open gifts and make dinner for the family coming over. Who are coming over in the afternoon because my aunt and uncle have their own families they need to spend Christmas morning with. The tree decorating and pie eating come from my dad's side of the family. If we don't do those things then he feels like he loses his traditions." Carson leaned forward and gently banged his forehead against the top of the steering wheel. "There's no breathing room. And my mom expects my boyfriend to come into the fold, not me to go out."

  "I see." Tynan shuffled his feet, crunching the gathered stones and dirt on the car floor. Carson needed to get his car detailed. "My family doesn't do that much stuff. We don't go to church. We put up a fake tree and there's no schedule for that. We make instant hot chocolate, if we make anything at all. Sometimes my mom makes sugar cookies from those frozen packages you can buy at the store where the cookie dough is all ready and just has to be sliced up and baked. Most of the time, the cookies don't even make it to the oven. We eat the dough raw. But we do have Christmas Eve dinner and we stay up until midnight playing cards or board games. We exchange gifts on Christmas morning and my aunts and cousins and grandparents come over in the afternoon for dinner."

  "That sounds nice," Carson said. He picked his head up from the steering wheel and put his hand in front of the vent. "Still blowing cold, but let's get out of here." He shifted into drive and backed the car out of the driveway.

  "So if your family has all these things they want to do on Christmas Eve and Day and my family has things they want to do on Christmas Eve and Day, then what does that mean? My mom would be just as unhappy if I skipped out on our traditions as your mom would be for yours."

  "I guess it means that we won't spend Christmas together. You go to your family and I'll go to mine," Carson said.

  "I suppose that's one solution." Tynan looked out the window but all he could see was his own face faintly reflected back at him. It grew dark early in November. He couldn't help but wonder if he and Carson stayed together for the long term if all their Christmases would be spent apart, appeasing their separate families.

  "Maybe we'll think of something between now and then. It's still a month away. That's plenty of time to come up with a solution." Carson glanced across the darkened interior and flashed a grin. "Besides, we have all the other nights to spend together. I'm sure we can find a way to make it up to each other."

  Tynan slithered his hand out of his glove and then reached over and put his left hand on Carson's thigh. He could feel the familiar warmth of Carson's body below his palm and the newly blowing heat of the front vent angled perfectly to keep the top of his hand toasty. "We'll figure it out."

  Chapter Two

  The grass in the postage stamp-sized lawn of his parents' house was stiff with cold and crunched as Tynan trudged over it to reach the door. The short walkway went from the stunted driveway, which barely contained the bulk of a single car, to the door. The tiny, unattached garage, held the other family car. Since Tynan always had to park on the street he also always had to cut across the yard.

  He didn't bother to knock. He'd grown up here and this was his home, even if he hadn't lived here for over two years.

  "Mom? Dad? Anybody home?" The door had been unlocked, so he knew someone was home.

  "In the kitchen!" His mom's voice came from the back of the house.

  Tynan went through the single large room that did double duty as a living room and a dining room. Yesterday the room would have been full of relatives. His mom had four sisters and each one had a husband and kids. The dining room table couldn't handle the whole family so they set up folding tables. Today the room was empty. Everyone had gone back to work, or stayed home to avoid the crowds, or gone in search of Black Friday bargains. They'd returned to their own lives after spending Thanksgiving together.

  The kitchen sat tucked in the back, with a separate exit out into the backyard, where his mom tended her garden and hung clothes out to dry in the summer. The lingering scent of food recently consumed permeated the kitchen and the temperature rose several degrees as he entered it.

  "Ty!" His mom angled a glass into the dish strainer and wiped her hands on a towel before coming over to hug him. "How are you?"

  She looked tired, but happy. She had her hair, now more silver than black, pulled back into a bun, but some of it frizzed out at her hairline. Even for a day working in the kitchen, she'd applied her lipstick, and looked stylish and put together.

  "Hung
ry," he said. "I was hoping there were leftovers from yesterday. Maybe some sweet potato pie?"

  His mom laughed and her eyes lit up. Ty could tell she was pleased that he'd come home looking for her cooking. His mom wasn't a great cook. She tended to make things out of boxes and from mixes, and she relied very heavily on the microwave, but she nursed some pride about her ingenuity. She liked to think her shortcuts created food that was every bit as delicious as homemade.

  "There are always leftovers. Especially from a meal as huge as Thanksgiving. I made up a plate just for you. Pie first while I heat it up?" She didn't wait for his response. "You sit down."

  In less than thirty seconds she'd moved a plate from the fridge, uncovered it, and shoved it into the microwave.

  "No Carson today?" she asked.

  "He had to work. I've got the week off." Tynan worked at the elementary school with underperforming students as a special counselor. He had his teaching degree and additional background in speech and reading therapy, but he had an office instead of a classroom. A succession of individual students came to him. One on one, he helped them as best as he could. The work was rewarding, and sometimes frustratingly slow to make progress, but he did appreciate that he had the same vacations as the teachers and the students.

  "Tell him hello from me when you see him." His mom brought a pie plate out from where she'd had it tucked away beneath an overturned soup pot. One lone triangle of dark orange pie waited for him.

  "I made sure there was a piece left for you." She sat down on the chair next to his and held out a fork.

  "Thank you." Tynan took the fork and took his first bite.

  The pie was as good as he remembered it: sweet, with a pudding-like consistency, and a mix of cinnamon and clove. Tynan also knew it mostly came straight out of a can. But it was the familiarity of the flavor and texture that he loved. Everyone might make the same exact pie, but it still wouldn't be his mom's pie. Something tightened in his chest.