Coda Books 06 - Fear, Hope, and Bread Pudding (MM)

I turned to my father and saw my own bewilderment mirrored back at me.
    “There must be something on TV,” I said. Even if it was in German, at least we’d have something to focus on.
    I was already counting the days until this visit was over.

Chapter Four

    C HRISTMAS morning, I left Cole sleeping in bed and went for a run. There were very few people on the streets so early. The market was empty and silent. The sky was overcast, the air damp and heavy and bitterly cold, making strange, glowing halos around every light. It was like looking at the world through a soft-focus lens. The bare trees seemed ethereal, somehow taunting me with the knowledge that nothing today would be what it should.
    The night before had been mercifully short. Grace had been overtaken by jet lag within the hour and had gone to bed. I’d dutifully followed my father to midnight mass at a local church, even though we couldn’t understand what was being said. By the time we’d come home, Cole had been sound asleep.
    I considered the coming day with trepidation. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I also wasn’t sure how I felt about Grace. She wasn’t the vile bitch I’d envisioned, but she was still the woman who hadn’t managed to attend our wedding or join us for Cole’s birthday, even when we were in the same city.
    By the time I got back to the condo, I was freezing, despite a long and brisk jog. I found Cole emerging from the shower. He smiled wickedly at me and tossed his towel aside.
    “Perfect timing, love.”
    I didn’t even manage to undress all the way. I lifted him onto the bathroom counter, pushed my jogging pants down while he fumbled with the lube, and then his legs were wrapped around my waist, his body tight and warm around my cock. The room was still filled with steam. His skin felt feverishly hot against mine, and the smell of strawberries was everywhere. We made love with the quiet furtiveness of youth, half giggling, half desperate, strangely aware of my father’s and his mother’s presence somewhere in the house. I wondered afterward if it would be the same way when we became parents.
    By the time I emerged from our room, having showered and put on real clothes, everybody else was up and dressed. My father and I were both wearing jeans, but Grace wore a wool pantsuit and had her hair pulled back again into its tight knot. She looked as though she was attending a social event rather than a comfortable holiday with family.
    Cole was planning an enormous meal for midday, so we had only pastries and coffee for breakfast. Grace, my father, and I sat around the kitchen table. Cole was already busy preparing food, although I suspected it had more to do with burning nervous energy than because anything needed to be done.
    “Come sit down with us,” Grace said to him when he started dicing up celery.
    “I’d rather finish this now.”
    She sighed. “I don’t know why you’re going to so much trouble. Certainly you could have had it catered, or paid somebody to do the cooking.”
    There was the slightest hitch to his movements, a half second of hesitation as his knife came down on the cutting board, but he didn’t speak. It was my father who answered Grace.
    “He likes to cook,” he said. It wasn’t a reprimand so much as a fond statement about his son-in-law. “Leave him alone.”
    Grace turned her head quickly away. It was a strange, jerking motion that was somehow familiar. “It just seems like an awful lot of trouble.”
    Eventually we wandered into the living room to open gifts. We took turns, opening them one at a time to make it last as long as we could. I wondered what it would be like in the future. Would we have a child to tear through the presents? Would we have a chance to assemble toys in the night and to stuff stockings? Cole tried hard to be bright and cheery, but I could see how it weighed on him. I saw his smile falter when he thought nobody was looking. Whether my father and Grace knew what was going through his head, I didn’t know, but they seemed to sense that something was wrong. There was an undeniably mournful undertone to the day.
    We were scheduled to be in Munich until the New Year, and apparently Cole hadn’t wanted us to be bored. Most of our presents from him consisted of tickets: a day trip to Salzburg, ski passes for both Alpspitze and Zugspitze, and tickets to a symphony. It had probably cost him a ridiculous amount of money, but I was relieved to find we wouldn’t be