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David pulled the last bottle of the new cornmeal and honey facial scrub they’d just started selling out of the box and set it down on the table, completing the row. He was just about to turn away when he stopped, inspecting the perfect row of beauty products—well, nearly perfect. Unable to stop himself, he reached out and nudged the most recent addition, moving it a fraction of a centimetre to the left. Just then, the little bell above the door jingled and David looked up to see his dashing husband walk through the door, two takeout coffee cups and a brown paper bag in his hands.
David couldn’t help the pleased smile that bloomed on his face. Although they had been married for a year now, sometimes David was still struck with how unlikely it was that, of all people, he managed to get his happily-ever-after. Even more shocking was that his happily-ever-after would end up being in Schitt’s Creek.
“I think your row is a little crooked,” Patrick said, nodding at the newly arranged display. He was trying to sound serious but David could see the faint tug at the corner of his lips that suggested he’d been watching David through the window before coming in.
“Mmmm, no it isn’t,” David retorted, gratefully taking the proffered coffee cup. He took a careful sip and practically groaned at the taste. Acting on David’s suggestion—which was not at all a demand, contrary to what Patrick kept saying—Twyla had invested in an espresso machine for the cafe now that she was the owner. Happily-ever-after was that much closer to perfection now that he had a steady supply of macchiatos.
“It just needs to be—” Patrick cut off as David reached out and smacked his hand, stopping it from messing with the perfectly aligned display of scrubs. “Okay, okay, it’s perfect,” Patrick conceded, chuckling as he circled around to stand behind the register.
David’s brows drew together as he took another sip of his coffee. “This tastes different,” he muttered as he tried to determine what it was that he was picking up on.
“She added a dash of cinnamon to the milk before steaming it,” Patrick explained, watching David’s reaction. “Do you like it?”
David took a moment to consider the question before nodding. “Who would have thought that Twyla would be a coffee savant?” David mused.
“Too bad her skills don’t extend to baking; it would have saved me a stop,” Patrick said, holding up the paper bag with a smug look.
“Oh my god! Did you get those doughnuts I love?!” David asked, macchiato forgotten as he rushed over to seize the bag from Patrick’s grasp. Rolling open the top, David sighed as he looked in and confirmed that inside were three of the most wonderful creations he’d ever eaten.
“I got three so that hopefully I can actually have one this time,” Patrick said, shooting David a chastising look as David unrepentantly took a bite of the light as air maple doughnut.
“Yo’ ‘ave ‘o ea’ ‘em ‘ile ‘ey’re ‘esh,” David mumbled through a mouthful dough and icing.
“Yes, but I’m pretty sure they’ll stay fresh for the next hour,” Patrick said. He watched as David swallowed his first bite and only stopped for a quick sip of macchiato before going back for bite number two. “But just to be safe, maybe I’ll just take mine to the back with me while I balance the books.”
Doughnut in hand, Patrick disappeared into the back room for only a moment before reappearing. “Oh, before I forget, Twyla wanted to know what the dress code for the party is.”
“Retro Chic,” David said, licking the maple icing from his fingers and wondering if he should make a token effort at resisting the second doughnut, or whether he should just call a spade a spade and dig right in immediately.
“Right… and what does that mean exactly?” Patrick asked uncertainly.
Would the people in this town ever develop a more refined appreciation for fashion?, David thought morosely to himself. “The theme is “Turning Back Time”, so anything that is in a style from a past time works.”
“I’m sure Roland probably has a few old pairs of bell-bottoms kicking around in his attic,” Patrick said thoughtfully. “Maybe I’ll ask him?”
David knew that Patrick was just needling him, fishing for a reaction… but just in case… “Bell-bottoms have never qualified as ‘chic’,” he snapped.
“I don’t know. I think there were a few years there in the 70’s when they definitely would have been considered chic,” Patrick countered. David pinched his lips together, wanting to argue but slightly terrified that if he did, Patrick would wear bell-bottoms just to get a rise out of him. “And tell me again why we’re throwing a party to celebrate the end of daylight savings time?”
David threw his head back and sighed, praying for the strength to explain his to his darling husband yet again. “We need a signature fête.”
“Do we?” Patrick asked. “Because I think we need a bigger hot water heater far more than a ‘fête’, especially since you like to spend half the morning in the shower.”
“It’s not a crime to have good hygiene. In fact, cleanliness is next to godliness,” David retorted.
“So that’s what those moans I heard in there were? Religious ecstasy?” Patrick asked, eyebrows raised.
Feigning nonchalance, he took out his keys from his pocket and used the jagged edge of his house key to break down the bottom of the now-empty cardboard box. To his relief, Patrick let the subject drop. David made a note to try to moderate his volume next time he was in the mood for a quick release in the shower to start the day off right.
Ignoring Patrick’s last statement, David continued, “Dad would have a conniption if we tried to host Christmas. You know how he is about their annual holiday party.”
Patrick nodded knowingly, having been present since the first rebirth of the annual Rose family Christmas tradition. He’d played witness to the increasingly elaborate yearly gathering David’s father had subjected them all to, especially now that the Rosebud Motel chain was taking off and they actually had some money to spend on it. It was still very small compared to the galas that the Roses used to throw, but last year Johnny had literally hired eight reindeer. They were supposed to give them a majestic sleigh ride across a snow-covered field, but all they ended up doing was eating the entire bag of birdseed that they found in the garage and causing a fair amount of damage to the paint job on his dad’s Benz.
“And Jocelyn would be devastated if you and I didn’t go over there for Thanksgiving,” David added.
“I’m pretty sure she just invites us because the one time you tried to cook a turkey dinner, you forgot to take out the bag of giblets,” Patrick pointed out.
“How was I supposed to know they stuff a bag of intestines and stuff inside the bird?” David cried, flushing a little at the memory. Patrick had been far too kind and taken a few valiant bites of the ruined meal anyway, but David was convinced he was going to poison his new husband with chemical waste and they’d ended up throwing the entire bird in the garbage.
Smiling, Patrick walked over and wrapped his arm around David’s waist, leaning up to peck softly under David’s jaw. “Aside from the faint taste of plastic, it was a gorgeous looking bird.”
David tilted his head slightly, giving Patrick better access to that spot under his jaw that he knew that Patrick knew always made his spine tingle. Patrick licked softly at the spot but, with a rueful look at the large windows of the shop which left them visible to anyone that happened to walk by, he chuckled and pulled away, arm slipping from David’s waist.
“What are you thinking of wearing?” David asked with a sigh of disappointment since it looked like they weren’t going to flip the sign to ‘closed’ and slip into the backroom together (something which Patrick acquiesced to not nearly enough for David’s liking.)
“I have some ideas,” Patrick answered vaguely. Taking the collapsed cardboard from David, he turned and disappeared through the doorway to their small backroom.
“Alexis and I are going into the city to check out some vintage shops this weekend. We’ll pick you up something,” David called after him.
“No need,” Patrick called back.
David was about to press the issue but just then the small jingle of the bell sounded and David turned to see a group of three middle-aged women enter the store and begin browsing the tables of products. Sighing, David cast a longing look at the brown bag that still had half a doughnut left before tucking it on one of the shelves beneath the till and shuffling off to help the women fill their shopping baskets.
~*~
“This would look cute on you,” David said smugly, holding up an ungodly, crinkly tracksuit from the 90’s in a shade that could only be described as ‘radioactive Barbie’.
“Ew, David!”
Alexis’s reaction was just as David predicted and he pushed aside the hangers on the overflowing rack and buried the atrocious tracksuit back where he’d found it. He scrolled through a few more hangers, stopping to examine a pair of scuffed-up jeans for a second before deciding against them. “This is hopeless. We’re never going to find anything in here,” David sighed, looking in despair around the cramped shop. Despite it being stuffed so full with decades worth of discarded clothing, David was becoming increasingly despondent that this whole afternoon was going to be a total waste.
“You just have to keep an open mind,” Alexis said, holding up a pouffy emerald grad dress against her body that earned a frown and a definitive negative shake of the head from her brother. She held the dress up, taking a second look at it and nodded, coming to the same conclusion as David, and hung it back on the rack. “Like that one time that I had to source an entire fashion shoot from a Nigerian street market when the shipment of designer clothes we were supposed to wear were seized by a local drug lord.”
“What’s your point, exactly?” David snapped.
“Just that you’d be surprised what you can accomplish with a few carefully chosen accessories—ooo, what about this?”
David inspected the dress that Alexis was holding up. Even though it was made out of what he would assume was polyester, which made his skin crawl at the thought, he had to admit the style held promise. A wide V-shaped neck promised a flattering decolletage on the right physique and the cinched, narrow waist provided a very sexy hourglass shape. “I don’t hate it,” David offered.
Ignoring David’s less than enthusiastic response, Alexis grinned as she held the dress up to her body. “It’s got total Dolly vibes. I could dress as Dolly circa 9 to 5. She’s so hot right now,” Alexis gushed.
“Please,” David scoffed, “Dolly’s always been hot.” He had to admit that now that Alexis had mentioned the resemblance, David could start to visualize the costume and it might actually approach acceptable. “You need a thin red belt to go with that.”
“Oh, good idea! I think I saw some belts up near the front window.”
Alexis marched back to the front of the store and left David to his own devices. He flipped through several hangers, fighting back a gag of repulsion at a particularly atrocious pair of lime-green corduroy bell-bottoms, before he stuttered to a halt at the unexpected find on the next hanger.
He ran his fingertips over the buttery, dark brown leather of the jacket and around the back of the low collar. Even if David couldn’t spot a fake leather jacket from across a crowded room, there was no equivalent to the feeling of the real thing. He pulled the hanger off the rack so he could get a better look. The lining had a few tears in some places, but it was nothing that a little stitching couldn’t fix—not that he had the faintest clue how to do that, but he was sure Jocelyn could help with that. There was no tag, but the closer he inspected the construction, the more convinced he was that this had to be a designer piece of some kind—quality like this came with a pricey tag.
“That’s cute,” Alexis cooed, craning her head over David’s shoulder to inspect the jacket. “You should try it on.”
“Where’s the changing room?” David asked, rising up on his toes to look around the store over the densely packed racks of clothes.
“I think that’s it over there,” Alexis said.
David turned in the direction Alexis indicated but all he could see was a mangy old curtain blocking off what David assumed must be a storage area. But the longer he stared at it, the more convinced he became that she might actually be right. “No. Just… no. I’m not going in… there,” he said, shaking his head.
“Just try it on here then,” Alexis suggested with a shrug.
“What do I look like? Magic Mike?” David asked incredulously—something he immediately regretted doing when he saw the smug smirk that bloomed on his wretched sister’s face.
“Somebody thinks very highly of himself.” She chuckled at the huff of frustration that David let out. “Untwist, David. I was kidding! You’re wearing an undershirt under your sweater, aren’t you? It’s not like you’re going to be swinging your dick around the place. Your nipples won’t even be exposed.”
“I don’t ever want to hear you reference my dick ever again,” David said, before adding, “Or my nipples either, for that matter.”
Rolling her eyes, Alexis pulled the hanger with the jacket out of David’s grip and pulled it off the hanger. David looked around reluctantly to see if there was anyone around them, but the store was still devoid of any other shoppers.
“Fine,” David huffed as he reached down to carefully pull his Roberto Cavalli sweater over his head. “But be careful with this. It’s from his 2014 line—it’s practically vintage.”
Alexis tossed David’s prized sweater over her shoulder with a level of care that he wasn’t entirely happy with, but rather than argue with her, he slid his arms into the arms of the jacket as she held it up for him. He smiled at the smooth slide of the satin lining against his forearms as he adjusted the lapels.
“How does it look?” he asked, turning to face his sister. Looking down at himself, he couldn’t help but admire how it seemed to fit him perfectly—it felt like it had been made custom for him.
“Mmm,” Alexis said, scrutinizing him. “You remind me of someone. Fonzi! You look like the Fonz!”
David’s budding happiness froze and crumbled at her words as his face shifted into a moue of disappointment. “Seriously Alexis? The Fonz ?! How do you even know who the Fonz is?” He spun back around and inspected himself in the mirror. He was hoping she would say Marlon Brando or James Dean or something… but the Fonz ?
“What?” Alexis asked, studying his expression in the mirror’s reflection. She bit her lip nervously, obviously realizing that David had found the comparison less than ideal. “Have you ever even watched the show, David? Arthur Fonzarelli was, like, the sexiest man on TV for years.”
David’s brows pulled together as he gave his sister a doubtful look in the reflection. “When did you watch Happy Days ? That show was off the air before you were even born.”
“I watched a few episodes online,” Alexis explained as she ran her hands over David’s shoulders and down his arms, studying the jacket appreciatively. “When Ted and I broke up, Mom was trying to make me feel better and she told me a story about how she used to date Henry Winkler in the ‘70s and she broke his heart, so I looked him up.”
“Are you telling me that Mom dated Fonzie?” David asked incredulously. “Does Dad know about this?”
Alexis shrugged. “I didn’t ask him. But anyway, I meant that as a compliment. He was quite sexy back in his day. And you’ve got the perfect hair! All you’d have to do is gel it back and put on a white undershirt and some dark jeans and your costume is set!”
David turned back to the mirror to examine himself once more. Mentally pushing aside the image of his mother kissing the Fonz ( never to be thought of again), David did regain a small spark of the initial excitement he’d experienced when he put it on. And she was right: the rest of the costume would be easy to throw together. The decision was cinched when he realized that if he bought the jacket, they could get out of this gross thrift store right now.
“Ayy.” David held up both of his thumbs in Fonzie’s famous gesture and Alexis grinned happily at him.
~*~
“What about the crudités? Are there enough carrots?” David asked nervously, craning his neck to try to get a look at the food table across the room.
“That depends,” Stevie said seriously, “If you have a warren full of rabbits on the guest list, then you might need a few hundred more carrots, but if the party is strictly human guests, then I think you’re fine.”
David scowled at his best friend, reminding himself that he was lucky to have her as a best friend, even though right now he wanted to wipe that sarcastic smirk off her face. “Wine! I should go and open up a few more bottles of wine so they can breathe!”
Stevie grabbed hold of David’s arm as he turned to rush off to the kitchen and pulled him back. “David, relax. Look around. There’s plenty of wine. Everyone has an ample supply of crudités to eat. Everyone at this party is having fun except you.”
David looked around the room again, this time not looking for some catastrophe that needed to be averted by a dutiful host, but rather watching their friends and family as they mingled and laughed. He felt the squeezing ache of anxiety in his chest loosen its hold the smallest bit as he looked around and found that Stevie was right. Everybody seemed perfectly content and were talking happily with each other. Jocelyn was showing off her hand-sewn poodle skirt to Twyla, who came dressed as a flapper girl. Roland was over by the bar, sloshing his drink over the rim of his cup as he struck an Elvis pose with one arm in the air, his rhinestone-covered jumpsuit leaving very little to the imagination and barely containing his potbelly. The only person that looked like they weren’t having any fun was Ronnie as she wiped Roland’s spilled drink off her chest. David couldn’t blame her though; he wouldn’t be having any fun if he’d been cornered by Roland at a party either.
Despite (mostly) everything going well, one thing was missing and David knew that was the source of his current unease.
“I just wonder what’s keeping Patrick,” he said as he cast another look towards the front door.
“I’m sure he’s…” Stevie trailed off as her phone trilled and she pulled it out of her pocket to look at it. A pleased look flitted across her features before she schooled them into a neutral expression. “I’m sure he’ll be here very soon.”
“Who was that? It wasn’t Jake, was it?” David asked suspiciously, trying to catch a peek at her phone but he wasn’t fast enough as she quickly locked the screen when she noticed his snooping gaze.
“No! Why would you think that?” she asked. David studied her, trying to determine if she sounded genuinely confused or if it was guilt at having been caught. “You have that look you get whenever he texts you.”
“What?! I do not! What look? I don’t have a look,” she blustered. She was definitely hiding something.
“I know he’s good in bed, but those orgasms come at a price. You know that he’ll never settle down.” David gave her a sad, resigned look. He’d seen her go down this road with Jake far too many times now. He understood why she did it—it’s not as if there was a bevy of desirable men on offer in this town—but he didn’t relish having to pick her up once she’d finished yet another shame spiral.
“It wasn’t Jake,” she bit out, just as her phone rang. Gesturing to it, she turned away and headed off towards the kitchen, talking in a hushed voice.
David sighed and looked around again, trying to recapture that sense of accomplishment he’d felt moments ago. Unfortunately, he found his mind wandering to whether the bathroom needed to be restocked yet and the creeping anxiousness settled over him again. He cast another look at the front door, watching it for a moment as he willed it to open and for Patrick to walk in.
It was just that this was so unlike Patrick, who liked to arrive ten minutes early to literally everything. The one time he decides to be fashionably late is the first time they’re hosting a party together in their new house? A host can only be fashionably late if they have a staff of people that will take care of all of the minutiae for them!
“Hey, David. Roland wants to know if you have any crackers to go with that brie?” Stevie asked as she reemerged at his side.
“He can’t eat the brie! That’s for the baked brie we’ll be serving later!” David shouted, to which Stevie merely shrugged her shoulders. With a huff of annoyance, David ran off to the kitchen to wrestle the $20 wheel of brie out of Roland’s hands, placing it back into the fridge and covering it with a bag of potatoes in case any of the other guests decided to rifle through the fridge and help themselves to anything.
No sooner had he finished putting out that fire than he heard his carefully curated playlist of music being cut off. Huffing a frustrated snort through his nostrils, he forcefully escorted Roland out of the kitchen—he didn’t trust him to stay away from the brie—and deposited him with Jocelyn before pulling out his phone to see what was wrong with the music.
Before he could pull up the app, the unmistakable opening chords of Cher’s classic wafted through the speakers. Twyla let out a gasp of excitement and clapped her hands over her mouth as she gazed up from the base of the stairs. Following her line of sight, David could just make out a single foot, wearing a perilously tall black stiletto heel emerge from the top of the stairs. Laughs and cheers increased in volume as a second leg, clad in a black stocking, emerged.
Cher’s throaty voice provided the soundtrack as David’s mysteriously absent husband made what could only be described as a grand entrance, a set of garters connecting his thigh-high stockings to the sheer black bodysuit that he was wearing. A skimpy pair of black panties covered the essentials, but left little to the imagination, and a series of black strips of fabric criss-crossed over his torso under the black leather biker jacket. By the time he had fully emerged, a crisp, white sailor’s hat topping the ensemble, almost everyone in the room was hooting and hollering. Ronnie wasn’t, of course, but even she had a decidedly less sour look on her face than she normally did whenever she was regarding Patrick.
Patrick tipped his hat at various friends as he made his way across the room to David, who was still frozen in place with surprise and was trying desperately not to beam at his ridiculous husband. Each step caused the coins on the silver belly dancing belt he was wearing to jingle, just faintly audible over the music.
“So? What do you think?” Patrick asked before doing a slow turn, pausing briefly to arch his back, making sure David had a few seconds to appreciate the thin strip of fabric that was only saved from disappearing between his cheeks by the bodysuit he was wearing underneath them.
David fought back a bark of laughter, covering his mouth with his hand as Patrick finished his slow turn. Shaking his head, David regained control of himself and schooled his expression. “It’s not entirely accurate, but it’s passable.”
Patrick grinned and stepped closer, wrapping his arms around David’s waist and pulling their bodies together. “If I could reach the stars, I’d give them all to you.”
David rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t hold up the pretense anymore and he wrapped his arms around Patrick’s neck and kissed him.
If he could turn back time, David wouldn’t change a thing because he was exactly where he wanted to be.