Category: Safe for Work

44 Candles

“Huggy’s?”

“Think I’ll go home.”

“You OK?”

“Yeah. Just…. Fine. See you tomorrow.”

Hutch looked after him uncertainly, then settled down to paperwork.

In five minutes, he was out the door, and in two hours, he was at Starsky’s, laden with parcels.

“What’s all this?”

“No idea — Avram took me shopping. You looked kinda blue, and when I checked the calendar…. Careful, that’s the… menorah? Is that right? Why do we need 44 candles? Starsk, I know I’m not family….”

Starsky hugged him. “You’re a great substitute! Wow — sufganiyot!”

“Avram insisted. Trust you to have a faith that involves donuts”

A Hanukkah Miracle

“Hutch, you don’t look Jewish, but there must be an ancestor somewhere…”

“You know I love applesauce — and those pancakes…”

“Latkes”

“…are delicious! Anyway. Why 44 candles?”

“If you light one the first day, Einstein, and two the second for eight days…”

“Oh, yeah. And eight days?”

“When the Maccabees purified the Temple, one day’s worth of oil burned for eight. A miracle. That’s why Hanukkah food’s fried in oil.”

“You made that up. To get more donuts.”

“Sufganiyot. Hutch….”

“Yeah?”

“You’re looking kinda like a miracle to me.”

With a wide eyed inevitability, they drew together in the candlelight.

Christmas shopping at the mall together the first time as lovers was no different than as friends, Hutch discovered. He waited while Starsky paid and finished flirting with the cashier.

Rejoining him, Starsky couldn’t miss the solemn look.

“You can’t be a grinch already, Hutch. We’ve only been to two stores!”

“Never mind. It’s nothing.”

Starsky looked back at sporting goods store counter they just left. Nothing but pretty salesgirls in tight referee shirts. He looked at his partner, suddenly understanding. He pulled them over to a gingerbread house display.

“Hutch, I’m gonna flirt with pretty ladies. I’m gonna flirt with little old ladies. I’m even gonna flirt with ladies God was less than kind to. It’s what I do.”

Hutch nodded and looked intently at a ginger man making a ginger snowman.

“But,” Starsky said, pulling them down on the nearby bench, “you’re the one I’ll always come home to, the one I’ll always kiss goodnight and the one I’ll always kiss good morning.”

Hutch beamed into his lover’s face. “Just then?” he asked.

Starsky smiled, slipped his hand in Hutch’s coat pocket, and whispered in a beautiful Nordic ear, “Probably more than a few times in between too.”

“Well,” Starsky sighed in early December, “It looks like we’re havin’ the holidays alone this year.” He brightened up a little. “At least we can Zoom Kiko and Molly an’ their families.”

Hutch sighed in his turn. “Damn it,” he grumbled. He was not a fan of computer technology. But in 2020, visiting was not an option, and if they wanted to see the people as close to them as blood, Zoom was the only way. “I hate not being with them.”

Starsky pulled his husband close. “Don’t worry schweetheart. No matter what, it’ll always be ‘me and thee’, together.”