A Royal Christmas Cruise (Stonewall Investigations Miami 2.50)

He looked at me, eyes glittering, and he opened the gift, taking more care than I had with the ribbon and wrapping. He reached the long black box underneath it all. Behind him, on the windowsill, I could see a small accumulation of the snow that had fallen the night before. We didn’t get it every holiday season, but it seemed like this year Spain had been especially cold, and the night before we had been given the gift of waking up to a white Christmas.

“Nick…” He opened the box and let out a surprised sound. “Nick!”

It was a key, golden and curved and heavy, its handle inscribed with delicate flowerlike filigree.

“It’s the key to the palace,” I said. “I want you to move here. I want you to spend as much time as you can here, and then for the months you have to go back to the US, then I’ll travel back with you. I’ve spoken to my parents about it, and they think it’s a great idea. You know how much my mom loves you, and my dad’s excited to get to know you more, too.”

We had already discussed some kind of arrangement where we saw each other for more than five days at a time, and this felt like the absolute best way to remedy that.

Judging by the look on Shy’s face, he thought the same thing. “I’ll have to figure out my job…”

“I’ve thought about that, too. I think you can pick up cases here. You’re basically fluent in Spanish already, and you’re damn good at your job. I think Spain could use you, especially the LGBTQ community. I’ve gotten so many emails, so many letters—you’ve read a few of them. There’s so much pain out there, but there’s also a lot of hope. I think you can give people that hope. We can get a working visa sorted and make your home base here, at the palace. I’d love to open up a section for LGBTQ activism, maybe have your agency also stationed here.”

“My own agency… Jesus, Nick. That all sounds…that all sounds absolutely incredible.” He almost seemed brought to tears. He set the box down on the dresser and wrapped me up into a tight hug. “I’m speechless,” he said into my neck. “Really.”

When he took a step back, I could tell he had been crying, his eyes shining.

“So you’ll move in?”

“Yes, abso-fucking-lutely,” he said with a laugh, wiping at his eyes.

“Good.” And, oncccee again, I had to kiss him. “Merry Christmas, mi amor.”

“Merry Christmas, my prince.”

We finished getting ready, both of us glowing as we hopped around the bedroom, as if there were a song playing even though it was silent.

Shy looked especially handsome in a green-and-blue cardigan my mom had given him as a gift, designed by Marques Molano, one of her absolute favorite designers. It fit him well, hugging his muscles and making his light brown eyes pop. His hair was gelled with a dry matte paste so that it rose up in the front while cut short on the sides. He looked like a holiday snack, and all I wanted to do was eat him up.

I checked myself out in the mirror next to him, finding us to be an attractive couple if I really allowed myself to gloat. I stood a few inches taller than him and seemed to complement him in every way, even in the red-and-white-striped cardigan I had thrown on. My hair had been cut short all around, although I let my beard grow in a little more than Shy’s bare face. I looped a hand around his waist and smiled at the picture of us.

On Shy’s wrist was a glittering golden bracelet—a gift from my father. It had been his father’s, and he had given it to Shy after he’d spent two weeks with us, the two of them having formed a deep bond. I was proud of my father, who stood strong and supported me, even when the church was clawing at his back, throwing baseless threats at us. It had turned pretty nasty, but my father never turned his back on me or Shy. He accepted him into the family and was quickly becoming a very loud voice in support of the LGBTQ movement, especially in Spain where public perception was shifting at an incredible rate and in the right direction.

“Maybe we can wear this for the People magazine interview?” Shy said, cocking his head to the side as he considered it.

“I like it, but the wardrobe people will probably have something for us.”

“Right, duh. Still have to get used to this.”

“You’re doing great,” I said, grabbing his hand. And he really was doing great. When we went public through an interview with Oprah, we knew that our relationship would explode into every headline within hours. And, sure enough, we were the trending topic for months. It had been around seven months since the interview, and I still woke up to random days where our names were trending simply because we were photographed out in public together, smiling and laughing about some silly joke. That had never happened to me before. My name never used to trend for this long, and it never trended globally, that’s for sure. I was used to the public eye, but I had to admit, I wasn’t used to the intensity of the attention that came after I went public with my relationship and sexuality. Things went from zero to three hundred in seconds flat. I worried about Shy, especially in the earlier days when his Instagram account blew up from four hundred followers to one million followers in a matter of days. Suddenly, people were either lifting him up or tearing him apart, and the noise was coming from all different directions. It was enough to drive anyone crazy if they allowed it, if they sat and read through each and every comment, each and every retweet. He had been open about his worries with me, and thankfully, his head never got too big, nor did he ever dive into the dark depths of the comment sections on any of the articles covering us. He stayed himself through it all, a positive and bright and intelligent soul. He stayed as the man I had fallen so deeply in love with.