Brief Encounters

Title: Secret Santa
Author: Clare London
Length:  33 pdf pages
Publisher: MLR Press
Genre: m/m contemporary
Rating: B

Blurb:

Seb and Jamie argue over most things, even in the season of presumed good will. When a totally unsuitable “Secret Santa” present for each of them causes even more tension, the hostility threatens to ruin the pleasant Christmas meal they had planned with friends. But there are strange forces at work tonight and both of them seem to be acting out of character. They find they’re working together in the kitchen, sharing confidences, and admitting to feelings they never dared before – and cooking up something rather more exciting than food!

Review:

This humourous and yet touching story has two themes rolled into one. You have opposites attract, and friends to lovers. Seb and Jamie have been friends for years, they know they can call on the other if they are drunk and can’t get home or need help, but they also fight like cats and dogs about everything and nothing. Seb is a meat eater, Jamie is an avowed vegetarian. Seb is a bit of a manwhore, Jamie hasn’t had a date in a long time. Seb is an actor, more often out of work than employed, and Jamie has a stable job he works hard at to advance. Things have come to a head one more time with the two when secret Santa gifts at a friend’s Christmas pre-dinner drinks goes badly wrong. and Seb accuses Jamie of orchestrating the whole thing, but this time Jamie is not going to back down. He did not give the gifts, and he’s not going to take the blame.

Finally after the accusations settle down and they can think rationally, they actually really talk, for the first time ever. So much of their supposedly good-natured arguing, which has scared off their friends so another apartment this time, stems from their own insecurities. Seb believes Jamie feels he’s a slacker, who parties too much, and Jamie believes Seb thinks he’s a dull boring stick-in-the-mud. Seems the insecurities on both sides are to fault for these assumptions and finally, after all these years they clear the air, while decided to make it up to their friends by preparing dinner for them.

I have to say I was touched by both guys’ revelations. They were both so used to putting on their game-faces, whether it was the snide quick-to-anger Seb, or the calm cool and seeming disinterested Jamie. Both just wanted to know that they are accepted and respected for being who they are. So I quite enjoyed this interesting short that takes place entirely within the small confines of an apartment kitchen, but in some ways that forces them to actually deal with the heart of the issue and get away from the surface bickering and arguing that has allowed them to keep each other at a distance. Some sexy kitchen antics ensue. So not an angsty story really, but a bit more of a serious theme running through it to give it some depth.