chapter four

f o u r

*

The first time I met Casper barely counts. Neither do the next ten times, when our interactions were limited to him asking me what I wanted and me telling him; him handing me a drink and me thanking him. It was only after around six weeks of me visiting Java Tea, once it became my new favourite discovery, that Casper changed up our usual polite barista-customer conversation.

"You've never ordered the same thing," he said.

"Not really, no. Unless I find a favourite. Is that a problem?"

"Not really, no," he said, echoing me. "Except you're a regular, and I'm under strict instruction to try to remember the regulars' orders. You're making that pretty hard. I might get a pay cut if Julio realises that I serve you several times a week and still have to ask what you want."

"If it helps, feel free to make whatever you want when Julio's around," I said. "He never needs to know our little secret."

As though he heard our scheming, Julio emerged from the back room at that point, holding a plastic bin to collect empty cups and plates. He looked over and gave me a smile – I knew him better than Casper at that point – and Casper wasted no time in starting a surprise drink for me.

"Quick, what's your name?" he whispered.

"Beth."

He stuck up his thumb and perfectly timed the serving of what looked like a latte with Julio's arrival at the counter.

"The usual for Beth," he said with a wink. Julio gave him a look, his eyebrows raised and his lips pressed together in vague disappointment.

"I have known Beth many weeks," he said. "She doesn't have a usual."

When Julio left, Casper glared at me. "You're such a snake. You knew he knew that."

I held up my hands. "Innocent until proven guilty. So, what is this?"

"A betrayal latte with sprinkles of deceit."

I took a sip and smacked my lips. "Mmm. Betrayal tastes like caramel."

The memory pops into my head as we get out of the car ninety minutes later, immediately hit with the sounds and smells of the market in full swing, and Casper grumbles that this feels like a betrayal of everything he stands for.

"We're going to have problems if you can't put your Chrissues to the side for one day."

"Chrissues?"

"Christmas issues. You've got 'em bad. I had to make up a word just for you." I dig a couple of reusable bags out of the back of the car and lock up, pulling on a pair of gloves now that we're out of the heat of the car. The rain may have finally stopped and it may be just above zero, but there's a sharp chill in the wind. Casper, who arrived last night in not much more than jeans and a jumper, is wrapped up in a thick green scarf I dug out of the back of my closet, when he said he wasn't quite ready to match me with a Santa scarf.

"Chrissues," he mutters under his breath, shaking his head at me. "If anyone here has Chrissues, it's most definitely you, Beth."

"What exactly is your problem with Christmas?" I ask as we wander past stalls of handmade gifts and bratwurst, one selling some kind of heathen invention of mulled Irn Bru. "You seem pretty normal otherwise. What turned you into such a grinch?"

"I'm just ... not a fan."

I glance at him but he's looking away, and I don't want to push it more than I already have so I drop the issue and head towards a stall that sells one hundred percent natural, organic bath products. My oldest sister, India, is vegan and only shops organic, everything natural and cruelty free as possible, without a hint of plastic in sight. It's not a cheap or easy lifestyle but she married someone with the same values and between them, they can more than afford the most environmentally lifestyle possible.

Family is one of those things Casper and I have never talked about in depth. I've mentioned sisters in passing before, idle conversation while he made me a drink, but I don't know anything about his own family, other than that his parents live somewhere within about fifteen miles of Saint Wendelin.

The market smells incredible, a mix of the rich, heady aroma of mulled wine and the blend of the various food stalls, mixed with the smoky scent of the incense stall next to me and the huge variety of natural-smelling products at the one in front of me. With every breath, I catch a different smell, from sweet rose to musky cedar; from cinnamon and nutmeg to vanilla and fresh laundry. I can't tell if that's from the beauty stall or Casper.

"Does this stuff actually work?" he asks, turning over a shampoo bar.

"Indy swears by it." I mentally calculate my budget and what I've spent on my family so far, before I pick up a few different products for India. She's the hardest to shop for, so I allocate a slightly higher budget for her presents. Paisley, by comparison, is the easiest by far: I keep my eye out for funky clothes in charity shops, and she's never disappointed.

"Indy?"

"My sister."

"Have you mentioned her before? I feel like you might have mentioned a sister before."

"This is what I meant earlier, what I was saying about us having an untraditional friendship. There's a shit ton we don't know about each other. And I have three sisters."

"Oh. Shit. Guess you were right," he mumbles, picking up one of the soy wax candles. He sniffs each and every one as I pay for my little India-haul, and as I turn to him to say we can move on, he picks out one of the shampoo bars – a lavender-scented one – and a warm vanilla candle. When he catches me looking at him curiously, he says, "I have a sister too."

There's something so strange about knowing him in this context, seeing him in a totally different light. It's almost off-putting, though I know that's not quite the word I want. It's jarring, perhaps. We're breaking all the unspoken rules we've built up, and everything we knew about each other before is no longer sufficient; there's a whole new rulebook to study, new information to learn and interactions to master.

"Any brothers?" I ask once he's paid, clutching a small paper bag.

"No. Just my sister and me."

"Don't tell me her name's Kat."

"Huh?" He gives me an odd look.

"She's the kid from Casper, the film. She befriends Casper, the friendly ghost."

"Oh. I've never seen it," he says, falling into step with me as we amble down the high street. He's short for a guy, but still taller than me, and a lot slimmer; our paces are a mismatch that he rectifies without acknowledgement.

"But it's your namesake," I say with a pout.

He scoffs. "You know that it isn't."

"Only because you've said so. For all I know, your parents are huge fans of mid-nineties animated children's ghost films."

"You're forgetting a crucial fact."

"Yeah?"

"I came out before the film did," he says. "Trust me, you're far from the first person in my life to make the ghost jokes, but I'm a product of nineteen ninety-four. So you can joke all you like, but I can assure you I came before the ghost."

"I don't remember that scene. I thought it was a PG film."

"God, Beth. You're disgusting. How old are you again?"

I know it's a rhetorical question, but I wouldn't be surprised if Casper truly has no idea. "Twenty-four, in exactly twelve days." Feigning my best surprise, I say, "Hey, did you know we share a birthday?"

I can't tell what mood he's in. I can't tell if he's in a mood. We haven't spent nearly enough time together outside of Java Tea for me to be too closely accustomed to his moods, when work forces him to be bright and tolerant. That's the only Casper I know.

But he smiles his usual Casper smile, the one I know best. "Golly gosh, I had no idea! What a marvellous co-inky-dink!"

"Got any big birthday plans? Twenty-five, huh? That's a big one."

"I was going to hang out with my boyfriend, two grinches together, ignoring the existence of Christmas in order to fully and appropriately celebrate the anniversary of my birth," he says. "Now ... I don't know. Might have to spend it with my parents. Or, you know, might fuck around and spend it in a pit of hungry alligators."

Oh. Well. I'm not sure what to say to that. Yet another thing we've somehow never talked about: parental relationships. After an awkward couple of seconds of silence, I manage to say, "You're not close to your parents?"

He scrunches his bag into his pocket, stuffing his hands in deep. "Nope." He looks up, then buries his chin in the scarf. It suits him, the deep forest green. "They weren't comfortable with the whole bi thing. Nothing outright, necessarily, but I could tell they thought it was just some kind of phase, or, like, jumping on a social bandwagon. I just knew they were clinging to the fact that I still like girls, amidst everyone else, so they didn't take it well when I told them about Eric."

"Shit."

"Yeah."

"Fuck, Cas, I'm so sorry. That must be awful," I say, my heart clenching and twisting like a wet rag being wrung out. "So you don't talk to them?"

Another shrug. "Not much."

I'm hit by a strange sense of guilt over the fact that parents reacted so well when I told them I'm bi. My dad asked me to explain – not because he's never heard of bisexual before, but because he knows the language around sexuality changes so much and he wanted to know what I meant – whereas my mother said that she's sure everyone's a bit bi. I think that may have been something of an accidental coming out for her too.

"Anyway." He shakes his head and rolls his shoulders as though he's shaking off a second skin, and when he looks at me again, it's with his bright, customer-ready smile. There's even a sparkle in his eye, though that could be an unshed tear, and a dimple in his cheek: he's adorable. I'm sure most guys would rather hot or maybe cute as their adjective, but something about Casper is just adorable, from his youthful babyface to his crooked nose; his cheeky smile to his bouncy curls. He has a sweet face, a friendly look about him that seems approachable, when he isn't scowling at me or grumping over Christmas.

"You know what they say about family," I muse, heading towards one of my favourite stalls. All it sells is different homebrews from a farm halfway between here and Saint Wendelin. Their mulled wine is incredible, their spiced cider a warming winter treat, and I can never leave the market without a bottle or two.

"What do they say about family?"

"Something about how the family you find is more important than the one you're given. Blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb: the friends you make and the family you choose are stronger than whatever genetics can throw at you."

"I ... hadn't heard that. Is that really how that saying goes? The blood is thicker than water bit?"

"Yup. It literally means the opposite of what most people think it means," I say, my words directed towards the vat of mulling wine that smells so incredible, I can't tear myself away. Rich red wine filled with cloves and cinnamon and spices, sliced oranges bobbing in the pot.

"Well, I'll be fucked. Reckon I can get Julio and Gloria to adopt me? Can you be adopted as twenty-five-year-old?" he asks, taking the sample cup that the stall's owner hands out. I allow myself a sip, but no more else I'll want a whole glass and I need to drive us home. My tolerance is pretty low, which is great for cheap thrills, but not so great for a lunchtime drink.

"I'm pretty sure you can," I say, closing my eyes to fully appreciate the scent. I already have a twenty in my hand, more than enough for two bottles of the spiced mulled cider – made entirely from scratch, using the apples from the farm's orchard – and one of the wine. "Isn't it Japan where most adoptees are adult men?"

"I have no idea. My general knowledge isn't quite so broad." He digs in his pocket for his change from the soap stall and pays for a bottle of mulled wine.

"If Julio and Gloria are unable to take you in, and you can't find a friendly liberal Japanese family to adopt you, I'm sure my parents would take you under their wing. They have plenty of experience being supportive of their not-straight kids."

I feel Casper's eyes on me. I meet his questioning gaze and start to walk away from the wine stall.

"My sister's a lesbian, and I'm bi, too," I say. His curiosity cracks and reveals a brilliant grin beneath.

"Hey, high five!" he cries with a laugh, as we slap our gloves palms together.

"Bi five," I say. "Or should that be two?"

I hold up a hand with two fingers outstretched, like I'm throwing him a peace sign, and he presses his fingers to mine. We look like a couple of kids figuring out a secret handshake, especially with the way he's grinning.

"I had no idea."

"I guess I never mentioned it. To be fair, when we met, I was dating Robert and after him, I was with James. You had no reason to question my sexuality."

"I never would have questioned it anyway. Not my place," he says, "but I'm bummed that I've missed out on four years of bi puns. All this time, our banter could have had a whole other dimension. Nothing like shared bisexuality to bond folk."

"Folk," I snort. "Okay, boomer."

"Fuck you. There's exactly twelve months between us, fellow disenfranchised millennial."

*

I've lost track of Casper. We got separated somewhere around the homemade chutney stand, when I turned around to ask him a question and realised he was gone. The hustle and bustle of a surprisingly busy Christmas market has swept him up and carried him away – or, more likely, his grinch side won and he has found an escape route, fighting against the festivities.

To each his own. I'm not his babysitter and he has my number if he needs me, so I turn back to the owner with wind-chapped cheeks and I choose three chutneys to fill a gift box for my father. I always plan to finish my Christmas shopping with at least a couple of weeks to go, but I'm never that organised, and I'm always seeing extra little things I know my family would like. I already know I'll still be wrapping on Christmas Eve. Which reminds me, I need more tape and paper. And maybe some festive-themed gel pens for the tags I haven't written yet. And some tags to use them on.

The pop-up Christmas card shop is a brief respite from the throngs filling the streets, when I duck inside for cheap wrapping paper that may well rip the moment I try to tape it around a box. The range varies from cartoons Santas and elves to depictions of churches and nativities; photos of frosty gardens and birds to the downright ridiculous scenes that would have nothing to do with Christmas if a designer hadn't added a jaunty hat or a few snowflakes.

It may be old-fashioned, but I still send Christmas cards. I don't know anyone else under fifty who does, but there's something so magical about getting post that isn't a bank statement or an energy bill, or a dreaded parking fine. I have all the addresses of my friends from university, even the ones I met abroad, and every December I write and send cards to friends who live as close as ten minutes down and as far as six thousand miles across the globe.

Non-religious friends – the majority – get something silly and Santa-related; a couple of Christian friends get a sweet nativity card; a handful of Jewish friends get a wintry English landscape wishing them a Happy Chanukah. Neither of my Muslim friends celebrate Christmas or any alternative, but they still get a card and my best wishes for the season. Stocking up on my card supply, my arms are laden down by the time I reach the till, where I see a card with the actual Grinch on it, a speech bubble above his grumpy green face reading: This whole Christmas season is stupid, stupid, stupid!

I add it to my pile. Casper's never received a Christmas card from me before, but that's about to change. This might even make him laugh.

*

final day of nanowrimo today! did you try it this year? i'm about 600 words away from winning, with 4 hours to go - i think i'll make it!