Theo and I laugh.
Then Theo slides my gift for him a little closer. I really wish this moment could be private. You don’t have to be dating someone to tell if they don’t like a gift. Unless someone here is secretly and exceptionally good at hiding their bullshit, I like to think we all have pretty good bullshit detectors. He torments me by tearing open the wrapping slowly, but joke’s on him: there’s still an ordinary box he has to get through, too. Once he breaks that open with his keys, he pulls out a bust of Batman. It takes him a second to see that it’s not Bruce Wayne’s face staring back at him. It’s his own, thanks to this website I found that puts people’s faces on action figures and dolls.
Theo laughs so hard he falls over. I’m close to collapsing with him out of relief.
“I don’t get it,” Wade says.
“On Halloween Theo joked one day Batman would take off his mask and we’d see it was him all along,” I say. We were shooting for “thoughtfully random,” and I hit that mark. Bull’s-eye.
Once Theo recovers and gives me a thank-you kiss, he props Batman-Theo beside him and gestures toward my gifts. “Open Wade’s first.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Disclaimer,” Wade says. “It’s sort of a couples thing, but I think you’re more likely to freak out over it, Griffin. But don’t mistake this as me being okay with you two being super-inseparable. I just had this idea and couldn’t shake it.”
I tear open the wrapping paper, and all I see is the back of a frame, but when I flip it over I see my face and Theo’s face. Together. Not like a mirror, but sort of. Different parts of our features are blended together to create one face: his blue eye, my hazel; the small string of freckles along his nose, my bump on the bridge; his bottom lip, my upper; his blondish eyebrow, my dark one. It’s a portrait and a puzzle.
My hand actually shakes a little at the thoughtfulness of this. “Wade, wow. Thanks so much.” I toss the picture in Theo’s lap and hug the hell out of Wade, probably for the first time ever, then sit back beside Theo. “I’m going to hang it up as soon as I get home.”
“Figured you would. Let’s see what Theo got you.”
“The best for last, of course,” Theo says. “Drumroll, please!”
We all sit still for a few seconds before banging on the floor with our fists. There’s weight to the small box. I tear open the wrapping, and it’s a little treasure chest. “Please tell me there are mini zombie pirates inside,” I say. Theo shrugs. I unlock the chest and inside there are four winged figurines with a little note.
“‘A compulsion of gryphons?’” I read with a smile.
“Thoughtfully random, right?” Theo is crazy excited. “Gryphons because of your name, obviously. Those little bastards are hard to find, by the way, but I found one with Wade in a thrift shop and ordered the other three online.”
I examine them, stopping when I see a little plate on one’s back. “What’s this?”
“Collective nouns just never make sense. A murder of crows, a smack of jellyfish, a business of parrots. Nonsense. Straight-up nonsense. I made up a compulsion of gryphons for you. Compulsion works because you have those little quirks and because I made magnetic clips out of the gryphons so they’re bound together.” Theo hands me another plate from his pocket and demonstrates by placing it inside my shirt and tossing a gryphon at it so it’s magnetized there. “Do I win Christmas? The point of Christmas is winning it, right?”
“You both win Christmas,” I say.
“Good answer,” Wade says.
“So-so answer,” Theo says.
I put all the plates inside my shirt, magnetizing all the gryphons. I don’t tell them I was lying. They didn’t win Christmas. I did. How could I not? There’s a compulsion of gryphons soaring around my heart.
Wednesday, December 31st, 2014
If I’d sat down with a psychic last January and she hit me with some prediction on how I’d begin dating Theo in June, I would’ve spent my year staging an elaborate mission to steal back my ten dollars. Even if psychics are real, I don’t think I would’ve survived the anticipation. Sometimes it’s okay to be surprised. It’s going to sound stupid, and I wouldn’t ever say this out loud, but the way Theo and I came out to each other was sort of like getting caught in a thunderstorm. Storms can suck when they’re knocking out power and ripping apart houses, no doubt. But other times the thunder is a soundtrack to something unpredictable, something that gets our hearts racing and wakes us up. If someone had warned me about the weather, I might have freaked out and stayed inside.
But I didn’t.
It’s New Year’s Eve, a few minutes till midnight. The party my parents are throwing in the living room for their friends and favorite neighbors is busy enough that no one has noticed how Theo and I have slipped into my room with glasses of champagne.
“Cheers,” Theo says.