If I Must (Mistletoe Madness) by Amy Lane

Author:Amy Lane [Lane, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 2009 Advent Calendar
ISBN: 9781615813377
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press LLC
Published: 2010-11-17T06:00:00+00:00

* * *

Think of him in the dark.

There was a story that Joel hadn’t dared tell anybody, not even Melody. That night, he lay in the narrow twin bed from his childhood, looking at the walls painted beige with navy trim, and allowed himself to remember the sound of Ian’s voice, the look in his eyes, the smell of his skin, on Halloween.

Their Victorian was in a nice residential area, and everybody decorated for Halloween. Joel bought a bunch of spooky purple and orange face lights, and he strung them around the window facing the landing. He bought plastic pumpkins and a carving kit and made Ian leave his computer to carve the faces and put the flashlights in. He even bought eight pounds of chocolate in spite of the fact that only the really brave would trundle up a three-story walk-up in search of candy, and together they strung spider webs and one of those funky-scary motion-activated ghost things on the front porch.

It was hot that day. Sacramento sometimes gave fall a complete miss and went straight into winter sometime around November, so they opened their door for the ventilation, turned off their lights, and sat and watched Poltergeist while they waited for their ghost to go off so they could give out candy.

They got a surprising amount of traffic for being so high up, and one of their last groups of kids had a little girl of no more than three with dark hair, dark eyes, and a little witch costume with a pointy hat and a broom. When Joel gave her an extra big handful, she thanked him in rapid patter Spanish, and Joel returned with his own greeting.

He left the doorway and came and sat down on the far side of the couch, stretching his legs out as far as he could without kicking Ian. He was just about to press play on the remote when he realized Ian was looking at him in the dark.

“What?” he asked, puzzled.

“You speak Spanish.” Ian’s voice was as full of wonder as though he’d said, “You glow in the dark!”

Joel shrugged. “Yeah? Lots of people in California speak Spanish.”

“But you’re from Colorado.”

Joel scrubbed his hand across his face and smoothed down his close-cropped goatee. “Yeah, they got- have- there are Mexicans in Colorado.”

Ian tilted his head, like he was listening to faraway music. “You… you translate, don’t you? You suppress your accent. Why do you do that?”

Joel shrugged and let his accent coat his voice when he spoke next. “I don’t know, Ee. You get told, you know? They tell you not to sound Mexican or you not get no job. It’s called ‘code-switching’, you just know, you talk Mexican at home and white at school.”

“But you don’t talk- speak ‘Mexican’ at home.” Ian sounded hurt, and Joel couldn’t figure out why.

Joel shrugged, wishing he’d pressed “play” so he could get lost in the movie instead. “Unless I’m talking to someone else who speaks Spanish, or I’m at home, I just… I’m just comfortable speaking like this, you know?”

“Oh.

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