TRISHA’S KNOCK on his door tears William from his horrible memories, and he swivels in his chair to beckon his secretary in. She’s wearing a sleek green dress with a large slit up the left leg and reindeer ears on her head. The headband is carefully concealed by her flowing auburn hair. She’s about six feet tall with her heels on and five nine without them.
“The catering company has arrived at the Hilton, and Mr. Paulson requests that everyone be there at eight on the dot. I’ve arranged for your secret Santa gift—a stunningly gaudy diamond Cartier watch and matching cufflinks for Marks.” She sets a box on his desk, presumably containing the aforementioned gift for Leighton Marks, one of his fellow partners at the investment banking firm. “I’ve also taken the liberty of writing your speech.”
He blinks up at her slowly. “My speech?”
She slaps flashcards down on top of the box. “It’s your turn to give the Christmas speech for the company party. I knew you’d forget.”
He stares blankly at the cards. He’s supposed to give an uplifting, life is so great, Merry Christmas speech to a room full of hundreds of employees. Him. He who hates Christmas and only attends this stupid party because it’s a job requirement.
“I’m sick,” he says to Trisha. “I’ve come down with a fever.”
She rolls her eyes. “No one’s buying it. Your suit is pressed and waiting for you in your closet. I snuck it in on your lunch break. I’ll wait outside while you change.” She points to her desk and then to him. “Don’t make me come back in here and dress you.” The door clicks softly shut behind her.
William genuinely likes Trisha, and he’s as happy as a two-hundred-and-twenty-eight-year-old man who’s watched everything in his life pass by can be. He’s going to miss Trisha more than most. He’s only got a few more years before this particular version of himself has to disappear. People start to notice when you’re not aging after a certain point. He’s been working with this firm for going on fifteen years, and he’s getting tired of applying makeup to make himself look older and using dye to add patches of gray to his hair.
After this maybe he’ll take a break and backpack through Europe. He’s due for a retreat into solitude. He can skip the next ten Christmases. Find a place where they don’t celebrate it.
He crosses to his office closet and takes a gander at his suit. Trisha went for classic and timeless. It’s an elegant black tux with velvet lapels, a crisp white shirt, and a cream waistcoat. The pants come with suspenders. She knows he likes them. Unfortunately the tie is a red-and-white candy cane abomination. A nod to the holiday. If he doesn’t wear it, she’ll probably put salt in his morning coffee instead of sugar.
He takes off his nice navy blue suit with the gunmetal-gray waistcoat and white dress shirt and swaps it for the tux. He can’t help the way his nose scrunches up as he fits the tie into place. If he thinks about the motion, he won’t be able to do it right, but if he does it automatically, his hands naturally make sure the tie is perfect. He’s been doing this for so long, it’s ingrained. He doesn’t need to look in a mirror to know that everything is perfectly in place. And truth be told, he doesn’t care if it’s not. He’s not trying to impress anyone. He exchanges his brown Oxfords for sleek, so-shiny-you-can-see-your-reflection black ones, and his outfit is complete.
He’s seen the ebb and flow of fashion throughout the years, and while he does prefer this era—with its lean lines and lack of frills—he wishes someone would opt for less layers when it came to men’s formal dress. Once he puts his winter coat on over it all, he feels like he shouldn’t be able to move his arms he’s so bundled up. And he’s sure to get hot at the Christmas party. They always jack the heat up for these things, and there’s so many bodies in one small area…. Why did he think it would be fun to do investment banking this go around? He should have gone into accounting. The less glamorous version of investment banking. Kind of. He bets they don’t have parties at the Hilton.
Trisha pokes her head around his door, not caring that he could still be changing and indecent. “Stop stalling and feeling miserable for yourself.” She waves a Santa hat. “If you smile, I won’t make you wear this till we get there.”
“I’m not wearing it at all.”
“You’re such a Scrooge,” she says. “All the hardasses get soppy and sweet at this time of year, and you go from soft and sweet to grumpy. Makes no sense.” She holds the hat out. “You’re a favorite for the kids. You’re the only one that lets them stand on your shoes for dancing.”
Sighing, he takes the hat. The kids only like him because he actually listens to their stories. He doesn’t filter them out like everyone else.
At least he doesn’t have to wear the Santa costume this year.
Trisha literally had to twist his arm to get him into it the last time.
“I hate this holiday. Let’s get it over with,” he says, scooting around her and making for the elevator.
Trisha’s heels click sharply on the tile as she follows him. “That’s the spirit, boss.”
THE HILTON’S ballroom is as extravagant as always. The center crystal chandelier could provide enough money to feed a third world country, and the smaller ones scattered throughout are just as decked out. Circular white tables with varying centerpieces take up most of the floor, but a portion in the middle has been left empty for dancing. Lining the room are tables with wrapped baskets on them—the prizes for the silent auction. The proceeds go to homeless teens and LGBT youth programs. It’s the one extracurricular that William controls (and insists upon) for the firm. Christmas music plays low over the speakers, and shiny snowflakes hang from the ceiling, shimmering in the lights. The cheery music makes his back teeth grate and his overtaxed brain throb.
“Why didn’t I call in sick today?” he wonders aloud.
Trisha whistles, ignoring him. “They’ve outdone themselves this time.” Her gaze is homed in on the chocolate fountain at the center of one of the tables. “I better be sitting there.”
She abandons him for the promise of chocolate. Her reindeer ears bounce with each step she takes. It should look hilarious, but somehow she pulls it off, and he sees more than one head turn in her direction.
He’s not left alone long.
Leighton claps a heavy hand to his back. He’s a tall, round man, with a bald spot in the middle of his head that he jokes came about from the stress of his job. “Hey, man. Look at you making it with a minute to spare.”
William takes a subtle step away. He doesn’t much care for people touching him these days. He smiles his work smile. “Paulson’s not going to do anything if we’re actually late.” Except maybe dump bullshit files on their desk for them to wade through. Tedious, but not really threatworthy.
The grimace on Leighton’s face says he finds it more than tedious. “Last time I was late to a function, he made me find his wife an anniversary present. She’s picky, man. So picky.” He shudders.
William blinks slowly. His smile becomes a little more real. “Haven’t heard that one yet,” he says. He’ll keep his paperwork punishment. He shoves his hands in his pockets and rocks onto his heels. He’s dropped his secret Santa gift off at the table in the corner already, and there’s not much to do but mingle until speech time. So small talk it is. Leighton won’t ask him about his holiday plans, at least. It’s not socially appropriate to say he’s going to stay at home, in bed, drinking vast amounts of whiskey to numb his pain. “You bid on anything in the auction yet?”
“A boat. I’ve been thinking about getting a vacation house on a lake. It could be fun.”
William snags a glass of champagne from one of the waiters passing by and sips steadily as Leighton explains—in great detail—his dream vacation plans. He has the money to do the stuff and two children who think time away from the city is a death sentence.
“So I’d have to deal with all the bitching,” he ends with.
William hums. It’s a neutral sound that Leighton can take however he wants. He takes it as encouragement, and he’s off on another tangent about how his wife wants to redecorate the house because she saw someone else’s and fell in love. When William starts to feel jealous of Leighton’s connection with his wife—strained and superficial as it may be—he knows it’s time to get out of there.
“I need to go for a smoke,” he says and excuses himself. It’s a gross habit, but since he’s not capable of dying, he doesn’t bother quitting. Besides, if it would kill him, he’d probably smoke ten packs a day. Two hundred years of this lonely existence and he’s ready to hand in his ticket. He wants off the ride.
After he’d been cursed, he’d scoured the world for people with magic, hoping one of them would have a solution to his particular problem. No one had been able to reverse it, and not one of them had been able to tell him what would end the curse—or when the unknown might occur. He’d been to seers in Asia and tribal leaders in Africa, and he’d spent a year with a witch in France who said the dark energy cloud hanging around him was unlike any she had seen.
So he’s pretty sure he’s in for another two hundred lonely years.
The hair on the back of his neck stands on end as he crosses through the bustling kitchen to get to the service exit. The caterers are running around at warp speed, preparing the five-course meal and making hoity-toity appetizers that look too pretty (and some too gross) to eat. William’s been around a long time, but no matter what fancy thing they do to a cow’s tongue, he’s not eating it.
He’s passing one of the workstations when from the corner of his eye he sees a flash of auburn curls tucked into a hairnet. They’re trying to poke free, wild and voluminous despite the effort to tame them.
His heart skips a beat.
He shakes his head. He’ll always have a fondness for auburn curls—will always feel his breath catch and his fingers twitch with the need to touch when he sees them—but it’s not Brady. It never is, and it can’t be. He forces himself to keep going. He’s not going to ask the poor man to turn around so William can stare at him to confirm that, other than the curls, this man has nothing in common with his man.
It’s freezing outside, in a way he’s discovered is unique to Chicago. It cuts right to the bone, slicing through layers of clothes like they’re nothing. His hair sways in the wind, sweeping across his forehead. He turns his back to it in order to light his cigarette, cupping his hand protectively around the end. Even so, it takes him three tries before the flame catches.
Despite the chill and his shivering and shaking, he takes his time smoking it down to the filter. He has no desire to go back inside and mingle. The smoke burns his throat and leaves a stale taste in his mouth, but when he’s done with the cigarette, he’s tempted to smoke another. His fingers are numb, though—he stupidly didn’t wear gloves—and he can’t feel his nose at all. If he takes too much longer, he’ll turn into an icicle.
His footsteps leave deep depressions in the snow.
He remembers—the images coming to him like it happened hours ago and not ages—being nineteen and spending Christmas in the French countryside with Brady. They’d had a moment in time where they were finally alone, and they’d sprawled out on their backs in the snow and stuck their tongues out to catch the still-falling flakes. When William had rolled, shifting to straddle Brady, the outline of his body and where their hands had been joined was clearly outlined in the thick snow. When they’d finished kissing and taking each other apart, they’d been unable to feel certain appendages, and their indentations in the snow resembled a messy blob.
It’s always been one of William’s fonder memories, despite their fear that they were going to lose fingers and toes to frostbite. At nineteen it had seemed worth it. With a smile, William thinks it still was. He’d do it again in a heartbeat if he could.
Reentering the kitchens with memories of Brady so close to the surface, he’s not all that surprised to be imagining Brady’s voice. It’s more what the Brady in his head is saying that throws him off.
“That chicken is overcooked. Throw it out.”
William rubs his forehead and frowns. Talk about random.
He hears it again a few steps later.
“Five minutes before go time. Pick up the pace, people.”
“Add a little more lemon seasoning.”
“That chicken looks dry as hell. Toss it.”
“How are the vegetables coming along, Monica?”
It’s like the familiar, warm voice is echoing around the room, following William to the doors into the ballroom. Maybe William’s losing his mind, because he has no clue why Brady would be saying any of those things. They’re certainly not things he’d heard Brady say when they were together.
Spine tingling, he turns and glances over the busy kitchen.
There are a lot of people in black-and-white catering uniforms and white chefs’ outfits. That’s it. Brady isn’t standing behind him with a smile on his face, uttering cooking instructions. And why would he be? Shaking his head at letting his mind (and hopes) run away with him, William pushes the swinging door and heads out to face his colleagues.