***ALEX***

Surprising nobody - least of all myself - I'm the first to show up at Joey's Pizza in San Castiel. Even Gideon, who lives in this part of the Bay Area, isn't here yet. Hell, there's almost nobody else in the place at the moment I step in, except for a guy - Indian, I think, or maybe Pakistani - sitting all by himself in a seat near the front window. As for me, I find my way to the table I usually share with Gideon and Luca whenever we come here. I say "usually" even though this is only our third time eating here, but that time being the third in five months, it feels like a long enough time that it's become a habit for us.

I want to order right away - the smell wafting from the kitchen makes my mouth water like nothing else, except maybe my nanna's għaġin il-forn (think baked lasagna - one of Malta's finest culinary treasures, right up there with pastizzi) - but I can't. Not without Gideon to get us his employee discount.

Speaking of which, I hear the door open and turn my head, expecting to see him walking in...but no, it's Luca, pulling off his hoodie and hanging it on a coat rack by the door, right next to mine. He spots me and makes his way to the table. "No Gid yet?" He bumps fists with me before taking his seat.

"The guy's being fashionably late, I guess."

Sleigh bells jingle on the door again, and Gideon finally walks in. He makes it a point of not looking at us at first, but only because he's busy making the order for our pie. Then, when he finally gets done with that and realizes we've been waiting impatiently for him, he settles in across the table from us, looking like he's about to explode with glee.

"What?" he asks after a long, awkward silence. After almost a year on testosterone, his voice has lowered to the point where it's level with mine, though his isn't as raspy.

"Just wondering how long it takes you to grow that beard," Luca says. "I wanna grow one, but my girlfriend might not like it."

Gideon winks. "The one benefit of still being single - no girlfriend who'll get pissed when she kisses me and gets her lips sandpapered." With his knuckles, he scratches the dark brown beard he's been working on for months, and showing off so proudly on his Instagram stories. "You know, even with the shots of vitamin T straight to the vein, it's been hard to grow this thing of beauty. I almost had to sell my body to science to pay for this other chemical that stimulates hair growth."

Luca nudges me. "I think Alex produces that chemical naturally. You should see how much he's got growing on his chest these days."

"But I still can't grow a beard to save my life."

"Still..." He reaches behind me and grabs my right shoulder, the one facing away from him, in what feels to me like a creepy death grip. I'm surprisingly un-averse to touch - sometimes I feel like people try to invalidate me being on the autism spectrum because of that - but there are times when someone's touch makes me feel like I'm on the point of a major freakout. "Gideon and I might have to harvest whatever gland of yours produces that chemical."

"It's not natural," Gideon comments. "The chemical, I mean."

"Yeah, but I'm artificially engineered." I gently peel Luca's hand off my shoulder, one finger at a time.

"Doesn't make you less of a person, though." Gideon strokes his beard again. "Don't worry, Alex, I won't try and harvest you. Luca, though? Don't trust him with your hormones." He leans back, smiling diabolically at me and Luca as we turn away from each other. "Oh, but before I forget...you guys can't handle this big news."

Luca and I finally stop looking away from each other to exchange grins before rounding back on Gideon simultaneously. "Try us," I say.

"Yeah, what is it?" Luca asks. "You're getting a car for Christmas?"

Gideon shakes his head, and waits until after we get our pizza - one-third basil and sausage (Luca's), one-third salami and tomato (mine), and one-third artichokes and pepperoni (Gideon's) - before taking a piece of paper out of his pocket and sliding it across the table. "Read it and weep for me, fellow gentlemen."

Luca and I lean in to read the paper together. It's not really a "piece of paper," though, so much as a business card for a Dr. Derrick Scott. "Plastic surgery?" Luca asks, reading off the good doctor's specialties.

I look up to see Gideon really grinning like a fool. "No way. Is this for real?"

He takes back the card. "Guys, your boy's gonna have killer pecs soon. I'm getting top surgery in ten days!"

Luca and I take a moment to let it sink in, then we come around the table and sandwich Gideon into a big group hug, saying stuff like "Awesome!" "Congratulations!" "Merry Christmas!"

"Whoa, hey, let me breathe!" Gideon pushes us off for a moment, but then says, "Aww, screw it, who am I kidding? Hug me, my dudes!" And hug him we do, again. As we do so, I look beyond Gideon and catch a glimpse of the dude in the window seat, now joined by a girl with brown skin and burgundy-dyed hair. I'm almost afraid our exuberant noise (especially Gideon's) would disturb them, but they're pretty much engrossed in their own pizza and quiet conversation. "Oh man..." I look down to see Gideon staring at the ceiling lights, a rapturous look on his face. "I'm so fucking ready, guys. Finally, I'll be able to play skins instead of shirts."

"And we're gonna be so damn jealous of your bod," I say, nudging Luca.

He crosses his arms over his chest. "Yeah, man, everyone thinks I'm a stud, but you're gonna explode ovaries wherever you go."

Gideon waggles his eyebrows. "And maybe some testicles."

"And maybe," I say with a nod.

More suggestive eyebrow action. "Including yours?"

"Why do you only look at me when you say that?" I ask.

"What, you want him to look at me too?" Luca scoffs.

"You're the handsomer one!"

"Yeah, maybe I got more muscle, but you got the better face!"

Gideon holds up his hands, reveling in the chaos he's caused. "Guys, guys, relax. I wouldn't contaminate your fragile masculinities by coming on to you-"

"We're not fragile!" Luca and I both cry out, but I'm pretty sure he can't stop grinning any more than I can.

"Nah, just cishet." Gideon winks.

I reach across the table and lay my hand on Gideon's shoulder. Not with as tight a hold as Luca did to me, though. "No, but really, Gideon, we're happy for you. Really. That's gotta be the best Christmas gift you ever had, huh?"

"Well, after my new ID card with my new name last year, this might be a close second." He claps his hands. "Hey, but why've we been letting this pizza get cold, huh? Come on, you know you wanna!"

Mmm...pizza. Always good, especially at Joey's. I never would've known this place existed if not for Gideon getting a job here and turning all his friends on to it. Now, even the deliciousness of Three Guys in Coldfire Creek pales in comparison to this. (Actually, they're Two Guys again now, 'cause they haven't been able to find another third after Russell's death. Though if they're ever Three Guys again, I'll be sure to keep up my suspicions of whoever the new Third Guy is. I no longer trust them not to spy on me.)

"I think I'm set for a while." Luca rubs his stomach. "These pizzas, they're so filling."

Gideon spreads his arms and puts his hands on either side of the plate. "One third each of these? I mean, look at the size of this thing! And this isn't even the biggest pie we've got!"

Luca's eyes, always bigger than his stomach, expand. "There's bigger?"

"And better?" I try to picture it, but there's no way bigger could fit on this table. "I thought this was an extra-large!"

"Actually, we've got a double-extra-large trial size. It was Allen's idea, actually. Yo, Allen!" Gideon leans back and cranes his neck around the corner to talk to the one guy in the kitchen. I didn't get a good look at him coming in, probably because his back was turned at the time, but I know he's in there - I can hear the tinny sounds of his music playing loudly on his earbuds.

I stand up, following Gideon around that corner, with Luca right behind me. Behind the counter, Gideon's friend Allen still stands with his back to the front door, dancing aimlessly to some tune on his iPod. It sounds sort of Christmas-y, which makes sense for the holidays, but also really loud and metal-y. Trans-Siberian Orchestra, maybe?

Gideon rings the bell on the counter. (Not the sleigh bells by the door, but one of those hand bells like Tío Hector uses in Breaking Bad.) "AL. LEN. GRANT!" No response, so Gideon really mashes down the bell, almost to the point where it's going to break under his hand. "Fuck, Allen, are you trying to deafen yourself?"

"If you had to meet my family for Christmas dinner next weekend, you would too." He stops dancing and turns around with surprising grace, removing his earbuds and allowing us to really hear the TSO he's got playing. Brushing back the brown locks that fall over his forehead, he lets a smile break out on his face, crinkling his brown eyes and drawing his heavy eyebrows together. He's got a light tan even in the middle of winter, about the same shade as Luca's or Gideon's - probably just as natural as theirs, I'm guessing. Or mine, for that matter. "Friends of yours, Gideon?" he asks. Gideon introduces me and Luca, and then Allen. "I spell my name like Barry Allen, but people still think I'm a paleontologist who got asked to beta-test Jurassic Park."

"Would you have taken that opportunity if it were offered, though?" asks Luca.

"Hell yeah, I would!"

Gideon drums his fingers on the countertop, and with his other hand, he fiddles with the lollipops sticking out of a small, dented tin bucket in front of the cash register. "Allen, my dudes don't believe me when I tell them we've got a double-extra-large pie on the menu now."

"Are you telling me we could've upgraded to bigger than economy size?" The Pakistani-looking dude (I'm going to go with Pakistani only because he reminds me strongly of Zayn with the tattoos peeking out from under his sleeves) shakes his head at his friend. "Firdaus, why didn't you tell me? We could've splurged!"

"I didn't know it was on the menu, Ahmad!" she cries. "No way we could've eaten it all, either!"

Allen bends down and picks up a long package of aluminum foil. "Doggie bags?"

Firdaus looks at Ahmad. "How long would you expect to eat your leftovers?"

"I dunno. A couple of days? Maybe three."

"I'd get tired after a while."

Allen hoists a massive plate which leans against the back of the counter. "For reference, this is how big the Joey's Double XL really is." He hides half his face behind the plate, which looks two feet in diameter (for comparison, I think the XL I shared with the guys is twenty inches), his eyes giving us all the smile we need to see.

Firdaus shakes her head. "Too much for me. I think I'm gonna explode just thinking about eating a quarter of that!"

"Same, same," Ahmad says, "but it'd be worth it, don't you think?"

They start arguing amongst themselves, and we turn our attention back to Allen instead. "Tempting," I say, "but they're right - that's way too much."

He slides the plate over to the front of the counter and comes around to slap a sign reading "Try our new Double XL pie - starting at $34.99!" on the center. "Just wait till the dinner rush tonight. I hear there's a bunch of corporate Christmas parties going on, here in San Cas and in South City too. They're gonna need to feed a whole lot of faces."

"It's not the dinner rush already?" I ask.

"It's barely even five!" He points to the clock above the counter, right next to the "Welcome to Joey's" neon sign. "You guys probably came here now so you could still fly home before it got really friggin' dark, am I right?"

"Not me." Gideon pats his chest. "I don't need to fly when I live right here in town, and I needed a day with my binders again."

"But it's true you're getting top surgery soon?" Allen leans against the counter, his hand on the edge of the plate. "Sorry, couldn't help but overhear."

"How do you overhear us when you're trying to deafen yourself?"

"I never said-"

"You did!"

Luca nods solemnly. "He's right. You said you wanted to go deaf before you met your family for Christmas?"

"And I reiterate," says Allen, "if you knew my family, you'd deafen yourself too in solidarity with me."

Our laughter echoes all over the nearly-empty restaurant, though that soon changes when, just as Allen predicted, a harried-looking twentysomething guy in a suit bursts through the doors, sees the Double-XL plate, and looks at all of us dudes. "I need three of these," he says.

Allen darts behind the counter. "Office party, huh? Let me take your order..."

Gideon has to stay here to help Allen out - right now, there's nobody else in the kitchen, and even a guy as strong as him can't manage all those two-foot pizza pies by himself. Luca and I, meanwhile, need to fly home before it gets too dark. Even though we're both pretty good at flying in the dark, it's risky enough that we really shouldn't. Luca, though, does a good job of keeping a flame revolving around us both as we wing our way southeast over the bay. For illumination, and a little bit of heat.

"Good thing it's not raining yet." I angle my head towards the distant San Francisco skyline about halfway back to Spellman. Distant, and it's been increasingly shrouded in mist and what looks like falling rain.

"They're saying this one's gonna be a pretty epic storm," Luca says. "Maybe as gnarly as that hurricane that brushed us in the summer. Lucky you, you missed it."

"Hmm." And lucky I didn't have to witness Paul's death that day.

Luca's flame nearly goes out as he remembers this too. Then he changes the subject. "I dunno about you, but where I live, they're saying we're gonna need to brace for impact. My dad's gone out to stock up on sandbags, and he's gonna have me and my sibs help him lay them around the house tonight."

"Does that include Mattia too?" I ask.

"Yeah, she's staying for Christmas."

"Cool."

"If we have any extras," he adds, "you should get some yourself. Don't you live pretty close to a creek yourself?"

"Almost everyone in Spellman does. The only reason we never really have any flood danger is 'cause we get very little rain anyway."

"Same for us, but my parents are really worried."

We cross over the Spellman Bridge, and that's where we part ways. I tell Luca not to worry, that we'll all make it through this storm just fine. "Haha, remember when we were ten and they closed all the schools 'cause of that Pineapple Express storm?"

"They made it sound like a total rain-pocalypse, and in the end, it wasn't."

I look back towards San Francisco, where the clouds are thick enough to filter the twilight into something much closer to night-level darkness. "Rain-pocalypse just doesn't happen around here, man."

"You better be right, or else you might find me knocking on your door with a big fat 'I told you so.'"

At home, I find Mom sitting on the couch by herself, playing with her iPad while watching Anderson Cooper interview some suit. Kristoff Scoville, I think his name is - an Aussie who runs an up-and-coming local tech startup. Hopefully more of a smash-hit Tesla than a flash-in-the-pan Solyndra failure, for his sake.

The Christmas tree, which Mom's been putting together while I've been gone, is all lit up beautifully, but none of the ornaments are in place - they're all sitting in boxes on the floor between the TV and the coffee table. "Were you waiting for me this whole time?" I ask.

She stands up and waits for me to kiss her cheek. "I, uh, I didn't know if you'd wanna help me decide which ornaments we put up or what-"

"What are you talking about? Of course we put up all the ornaments. Why wouldn't we?"

She nudges one of the boxes with her feet. "What about the classic cars you and Gabe always picked out? Or...what about your preschool and kindergarten art projects?" She bends down and picks up just such an example - matching hand-painted wooden candle shapes with my name on one and Gabe's on the other.

"Mom..." I take the candles and put them on the tree. "Just 'cause Gabe's not here this year doesn't mean we should pretend he never was."

Mom swallows loudly behind me. "Alex, are you sure you wanna stay by yourself this year? I mean, you and Gabe kept staying home for Christmas for years, but...you don't get to see your grandparents and your cousins enough. They miss you, you know. Don't you miss them?"

"I do. But..." I stare into the candles like they're actually flaming. "I don't wanna hear anyone think it's okay to shit all over Gabe just 'cause he's dead now."

"They wouldn't do that," Mom says hotly. "And believe me, if they do - which, hopefully, they wouldn't, 'cause I'd kick their asses personally if they did, even if they were my own folks-"

"Mom, please don't try and pressure me into this." I reach out to take another ornament she hands me - in this case, a black Buick Roadmaster convertible model with presents stacked on the backseat. "I'm staying home. Either that, or I'm gonna fly out to San Cas and hang with Gideon."

"Might as well hop on over to Pacific View from there to meet the grandparents," Mom scoffs. "And the cousins. There's gonna be a pretty big reunion this year - another cousin of mine's moved back to South City, and she has a couple of twin boys herself...or, well, she had twins. One of them died in that wildfire in Oregon this summer-"

"You have so many cousins I've never met, Mom. And how is it that there's another one of them who's had twins? I thought Gabe and I were just a freaky anomaly."

"Don't give yourself too much credit." She reaches for a plate of red-and-green-sprinkled cookies sitting on the coffee table, which I hadn't even seen before - probably because the pizza I'm digesting has made me food-blind. Munching on one of those cookies, she adds, "You could bond pretty well with Allen, I bet. He's only a year older than you are."

"I've got enough friends, Mom...wait, did you say 'Allen?'"

"Yeah. Why?"

I turn around and eyeball her iPad. "You have any pictures of him?"

"As a matter of fact, I do."

"Uh-huh, stupid question. You've got pictures out the wazoo."

She pauses in the process of unlocking her iPad long enough to side-eye me for my gross joke, then navigates to her Facebook app and finds her cousin's account. She shows me pictures of two guys who look extremely similar - identical twins, I think, although one wears glasses while the other doesn't, and the one with glasses looks darker-skinned, closer to my tone. "That's Tommy," she says, pointing to the former. "He's the one who died. What a shame, I remember hearing how outdoorsy he was...but this one here, that's Allen."

I nod as I look at the frozen frame of Allen Grant sitting in what looks like a library, Mona Lisa smiling at some unseen presence over the photographer's left shoulder. "I just met this guy. He, uh, he works at Joey's Pizza with Gideon."

"Huh?" Mom jumps back from the photos, then finds her way to another post - all text, congratulating Allen on his new job. "Oh my God, you're right! You...you actually met him today? Holy shit, what a coincidence!" She almost drops her iPad, she's so busy laughing. "Okay, you have to come over with me on Christmas now! Like I said, you two could really bond, you know?"

"Mmm, I'll think about it." I play it off all non-committal, but in reality I'm reconsidering my Christmas-day solitude plans. "Hmm. Should've known he and I were related."

"How so?"

I feel myself blushing just thinking about it. "He uses music and selective deafness for social avoidance."

"Haha, I was right. You two are both buttheads. Um, Butthead was the brown-haired one, right?"

"Why are you asking me? I never watched that."

"Alex, you watch everything."

"Except that. And except The Voice. And except Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. And except Empire. And except Orange Is The-"

"All right, all right," Mom laughs, holding up her hands and throwing a sparkly red garland into my face. "I get it."

Later that night, when I'm in bed, I pick up my phone and start searching through all my social medias for some presence of my cousin. I can't find any sign of him, though. At least, not under his real name. Maybe he's under an alias of some kind, if he's online at all. I know a guy in Oregon (not personally, just online) who uses different names to share stuff online - one handle for novels, one for indie rap, one for streaming video games. Hell, if I were a little more paranoid (especially about Mom snooping on my accounts - like how Luca refuses to use his real name online, instead going by "Luke Raymonde" - I forget exactly how he came up with that one-)

Snapchat alerts me to someone sending me a message. At first, I think it's Gideon somehow sensing that I'm trying to look up the cousin I never knew about till today, but no, it's not him. It's Kelly, direct from Hell.

Hmm. What could she want?

I open her Snaps - she's sent me three. "hey baby" "what's up?" "miss you"

Haha, all lowercase. I'm so not used to sending texts or any other kind of messages that way, but for Kelly, I've found myself mirroring it. "we just saw each other last night."

"i know. made you hella happy, didn't i?"

I can't help but smile at that, and that's the first image she sees in my next set of Snaps. "i'm glad you let me stay the night" "and that i made you happy too."

She looks like she's trying not to laugh, probably because everyone else in her house must be asleep. And she's got half her face covered by her curly hair, which she cut to shoulder length after Thanksgiving. "oh, just say it, alex" "you ate me out like a pro."

And she returned the favor with a beautiful blowjob too. "can't exactly do that tonight." "i'm a whole dimension away."

"yeah..." "but who says we can't still play, huh?"

I'm really struggling not to laugh at the thought of what she's asking. Me, I've never really given a thought to long-distance sex before. When I was with Juliet, we never did anything like that - we both preferred real, physical contact so much. I think Kelly, though, is a little more adventurous.

Which she proves by sending me something I never once got from Juliet - a picture where she's wearing only a bra and panties. "i really wanna try this."

I contemplate this for what feels like an eternity before getting my shirt off and grabbing my crotch. "you know what?" Then I tug on the elastic of my boxers and give her a view of what lies inside. "i'm down for this."

Kelly's bra comes undone, and she barely holds it in place with one hand. "that's a yes?"

She's being a tease, but I'm not. Boxers off completely, and I send her a few ROFLing emojis followed by this overly aroused gem: "yes yes yes"

Turns out, though, Snapchat sex is actually pretty awkward - at least, it is for me, because while I can't speak for Kelly, I'm going into this a virtualist virgin. I normally like to use both hands when I'm on my own, but here I have to keep one hand free to hold my phone, look at Kelly's Snaps, answer them with Snaps of my own from bad angles (not that hers are any better.) Hell, I find myself working better by closing my eyes and recalling last night - or, even better, imagining when we eventually go all the way.

But after five minutes or so, she seems satisfied with the final result "ily," she says in a freeze-frame of a blown kiss.

Feeling stupid, I smile back at her. "iafm"

"say what?"

Do I have to explain it? Well, considering I invented this acronym on the spot...I take a picture of the long white ropes shining on my abs in the dark. "i'm a fucking mess" To which she responds with her own ROFLing emojis, and I further add, "ily2, kel."

Heart emojis, then she says, "it'll get better the more you do this, i bet."

"you sure?"

"no, but we can hope, right?" "good night baby"

I clean myself up before giving her my own good-night Snap, then put my sleep threads back on because it's way too cold to sleep naked, even under heavy layers of flannel sheets.

Yeah, I liked that, my first time having long-distance sex. I still think the real deal is better, and I can't help but think what I did tonight was basically a glorified jerk-off.

But hey, this is Kelly we're talking about. Like most demons I know, she's sweet, charming, and unafraid of physical love. I can see myself being together with her for a very long time.

Barring any unforeseen, unpleasant, unnatural circumstances, that is.

Knock on wood.

(Not mine, of course. It's gone soft by now.)