The Holiday Sitter

Gay business manager Sam Dalton is planning on a Hawaiian Christmas this year, his first Christmas away in years in usually having or wanting to work during the holidays from his home base of New York City. He leaving four days before Christmas, it will be a solo venture in not having a significant other, his unsuccessful dating life usually not including a second date in always finding a reason to pull away. Not a family person, especially in not understanding children, or understanding proverbial suburbia, he is blackmailed by his sister and brother-in-law Kathleen and Nate Walker, on an emergency, to sit for their two children, young teen Miles Walker and adolescent Dania Walker, a two hour drive away in small town Braden upstate instead leading up to Christmas, he changing his plans to leave for Hawaii on Christmas Eve. Sam is somewhat of a last choice for Kathleen and Nate in the disaster that was the last time he sat for them five years ago. Needing help, Sam hires what he ends up calling an "uncle consultant" in the form of the Walkers' next door neighbor, Jason DeVito. Also gay, Jason, the youngest of seven and uncle to eighteen, moved back to Braden from Los Angeles to be with family, he aspiring to that suburban family life. While he would have gladly helped Sam for free in he being a natural with children, Miles and Dania who he knows well, Jason admits the money comes in handy for the lawyer retainer fees in he going through a single adoption. An unspoken mutual attraction forms between Sam and Jason in they spending time together in a pseudo family life with Miles and Dania. Beyond their two very different wants for their individual futures, another hurdle Sam and Jason need to overcome is moving their relationship from this formal, paid one and the connotations associated to that, to a purely personal one.—Huggo