The Luckiest (16 page)

He thinks about it. “I have to finish with the cakes—I want them done so in the morning all we have to do is move them. You and Jasmine can get the candles ready for the tables, and then after the rehearsal I have to run into Houston with the boys to make sure their clothes are sorted.”

“You guys can’t do that here?”

“No, there’s… God, you don’t want to know the details, but no. And that’s okay, really, because I have to pick up the programs anyway, and now we have to print jewel case liners,” he says, glaring at her, “and so I’d have to be out of the house anyway. So then tonight Nik and I will be burning midnight oil and roughly a
thousand
CDs. It’s fine—we’ll figure it out. When are your parents getting here?”

“God,” she groans. “They’re actually already down here—my mom called while Jasmine and I were running errands and so we stopped by the hotel. David’s parents are there, too, so all four of them were hanging out in my parents’ suite, getting busy with what looked like
several
bottles of wine. The rehearsal is going to be interesting.”

Aaron grins at her. “This is what happens when you let the parents be idle—you should have given them work to do.”

“And let them call the shots? No way.”

“Still. They have nothing to do but sit around and think, and you know how that always ends.” He looks at her. “You know, you should have
them
deal with the candles and the jars. After rehearsal, when I’m gone with the boys. Set them up here at the table and make them work for it. Make them do the lemonade, too.”

She stares into her glass. “God, my mom would
love
it. You should have seen how David’s mother teared up when I told her what the jam was for, last week. Is it terrible that I didn’t even think of getting them to help?”

He shrugs. “You’ve always liked doing things on your own—no reason to stop now. And after your mom’s reaction when you broke up with Andy—well, it makes sense. It sounds like they’ve come to really like David’s parents, though?”

“It’s still awkward, but they’re trying. Our dads this after­noon, especially—they were sitting there talking about foot­ball like either of them gives a damn, and they’re
so
much alike, and someday I think they’re going to be real friends. It’s just been weird—my parents really know David now, they like him, but we should have had our parents get together more often.”

The screen door slams, and Alex’s mother’s voice cries out, “Hello?”

Alex sighs and mutters, “Here we go,” before she calls out, “In here!”

Alex’s mom comes in first, and squeals, “Oh, Aaron,
m’ijo
!” and then he’s being gathered up and smothered again. Maria Martinez Garcia is a force of nature—Alex comes by it honestly—and since Alex is her only kid, she’s been trying to mother Aaron since he and Alex were in middle school and he came to her house after school for help fixing two buttons ripped off his shirt and a cut on his forearm before he went home. It’s not worth the trouble of trying to stop her now, and he’s not even sure he wants to. That long-ago afternoon, the woman he still called Mrs. Garcia gave him a needle and thread without a word, and then washed the cut and avoided meeting his eyes while Alex stuck cinnamon toast in the oven. They were quiet while the water ran pink and then clear, and just as she smoothed the Band-Aid over the cut she tried to tell him how much easier his life would be if only he could butch up a little—what she had actually said was, “How about football, maybe?” That was enough to inspire him to avoid her for three years.

And then one morning, toward the end of their sophomore year in high school, Alex was taking forever to get dressed for school. He was trapped in the kitchen with her mom, and over the sound of Alex trying to outshout Sara Bareilles in her bedroom—”You mean well/ but you make this hard on me”—he took a long drink of Diet Coke, looked at the floor and said, “I’m gay,” mostly to see what would happen. He’d already told his mother and his aunt, his girlfriends all knew and had been sworn to secrecy, and things were just starting to heat up a little bit with Nik; maybe that was why he wanted to say it out loud to somebody who wasn’t family and wasn’t a stranger but something in between. Adrenaline pumped through his body, and he was finally ready—he was ready to flee and he was ready to fight. And instead, she put her arms around him and said, “Of course you are, you brave boy.”

And that’s why, even now, Alex’s mom can hug him and call him
m’ijo
and baby him whenever she wants. It’s not
only
because she still scares him a little bit.

He hugs her back, he smiles for Alex’s dad and David’s par­ents, and then he gets the hell out of there and back to his kitchen, begging Nicole to let him take over for a little bit while she takes lemonade out for the group.

The rehearsal is a welcome break—everybody is out in the yard except Mia, Nicole and Aaron, and they put their heads down and work. Before the screen door is slamming to let them all back in again, he has finished the cakes—at least as finished as they’re going to get tonight—they’re back in the refrigerator and he’s filling up two more piping bags with buttercream for disasters and repairs tomorrow.

Stephanie laughs all the way into the kitchen and says, “We’re ordering pizza again. Totally appropriate for a rehearsal din­ner, am I right?”

Mia and Nicole are lavish and a little pathetic in their thanks to her, and Aaron hums to himself as he washes a bowl—he’s so glad somebody else is doing most of the cooking, and he’s just as glad that he is getting out of here for the night.

After Nik comes in, sweaty and happy from talking music with his friends, and drags him out of the kitchen for a shower and a slice, they stand in the living room and say their good­byes. David’s dad is coming along, telling Alex that he wants to see his boy all decked out before the big day. They take two cars so that Tu and David and David’s dad can head straight back, and the drive to Clear Lake, so close to where they all grew up, is easy, relaxed, almost reflexive. Aaron keeps glancing at Nik, who is watching this nondescript patch of highway fly by. Right after they cross the bridge to the mainland, Aaron asks: “Why grad school?”

Nik shrugs. “It seemed like the right thing to do; they threw some money my way and since I didn’t pay for anything as an undergrad, I can afford to do it.” He’s quiet for longer than Aaron expects, and when he glances at Nik again, he’s back to staring out the window. “God, I
loved
my student teaching—it was a weird semester, being single again and being in the classroom all the time—but it was amazing. It’s better, though, for me to get a little more experience under my belt, get a little older, before I’m in a classroom full-time.”

“Did something go wrong?”

Nik takes a deep breath, blows it out, and then takes another. “No, not at all. It’s just… I thought about my own time in high school
so much.
Everything with the music programs is so ordered, you know—the state organizations run every­thing so care­fully—and it was even more intense because, I mean—you know what our school was like.” Aaron nods; he’d always been so jealous of the opportunities Nik had simply by virtue of where his parents could afford to live.

“So, you know, we had this long tradition of excellence and the whole vibe was so
defensive
, so competitive about everything. And I thought a lot about your experience, too, about how hard you worked to get out, and how differ­ent it was for you—I mean, just how different the schools were, and the demographics and the
money
and what that meant for both of us. I don’t think I had really taken it all in, not until I got into a classroom of my own, about how dif­ferent it was for us because of that one thing. So, yeah, I think a little more space, being somewhere else, and having a little more distance from my own experience can only help with that.”

Nik pauses for a long time and Aaron waits until he con­tinues in a voice soft, reflective voice. “The school where I was teaching was kind of a mess—it was mostly working-class kids, so the music programs were really pretty hit-or-miss. And there was a boy in the orchestra where I was teaching, a freshman cellist named Ryan. He reminded me
so much
of you—not physically, but his mannerisms, and God, his smarts. He was fourteen, and I’m not even sure he was out to
himself
yet, but it was coming. I wanted to wrap him up, keep him safe, protect him from everything he was up against. And it would have been the absolute worst thing for him, because even in the time that I was there he grew so much, really came into his own—kids are remarkable, you know?”

“Did he come out while you were there?”

“Not that I heard about. But he stopped being so timid about speaking up for himself, found some good friends. Just… his
body
was looser, he smiled more, he was even a better cellist—he was easier in himself somehow. If I’d tried to make a pet project of him, he never would have learned to do that for himself, and God knows he’ll need it.”

Aaron drums a non-rhythm on the steering wheel. “Sounds familiar.”

“Yeah. I told you, he reminded me of you. I thought about it a lot, what you must have been like before I knew you, what you might be doing while you were so far away.” Nik reaches across the car and puts a gentle hand on Aaron’s knee. “It… this sounds ridiculous, but I am so far from done with you. I think I’ll always want to know more about you.”

Nik’s hand is warm and soft on Aaron’s knee, but mostly what he feels is this incredible
tug
between them, like a line straight between him and Nik that quivers and shakes and pulls, always pulls, and he wants
so badly
to hurl himself across the few feet that separate them. Instead he says, “And so that’s why New York.”

Nik watches him and says, “Well, yeah. That’s a part of it.”

“What’s the other part?”

“Well shit, Aaron,
New York
!” Aaron laughs. “It’s not like I didn’t
want
to go there—there’s no place quite like it for a musician. And, I mean—Columbia’s program is amazing, it really is.”

“Oh, Nik, you are gonna
love it
there. I can’t
wait
to show you
everything.
” He glances at Nik, whose head is rocking back against the headrest, turned toward him with an eager smile.

“Are you still living in the East Village?”

“God, no—the rent was too steep, and two years of that pretty much cleaned me out. At the beginning of junior year I moved to Brooklyn, and ended up with two of the worst roommates known to man.”

Nik grins. “Tell me about them.”

So he tells Nik about Tara, with her phallic art and her dis­turbing habit of asking her male friends to model for her; and about Joseph, who seems to need to fry everything he eats and is still deep in the middle of a seafood craze; and his partner Jamie, who basically lives in Joey’s room and spent all spring smoking her way through her student loan money.

“So, in short, the whole apartment reeks of fried fish, tur­pentine and pot smoke
all the
time
—when I pulled things out of my suitcase at home the first Christmas after living with them, my mother actually sat me down for a Very Special Chat. We live in a cold climate and wool holds on to every scent that comes near it; my sweaters are now living in
plastic bags
because of that. Plus I have to be
very
careful to be fully dressed at all times in case Tara ambushes me again! It’s ridiculous.”

Nik laughs. “So why don’t you move?”

Aaron shrugs. “It’s a hassle to find a new place, and I’ve settled in there. Manhattan is so expensive, and I’ve just gotten used to Brooklyn. And the commute’s not terrible, so.” He shrugs. “I’m used to it, I guess.”

Nik gets quiet, looking out the window, and then he says, “And what’s the commute like between Brooklyn and Morning­side Heights?”

Aaron shrugs. “It depends on the time of day, but probably at least an hour.”

Nik’s head whips around. “An
hour
?” he says, distress clear in his voice.

Aaron grins. “Nik, between walking and train schedules, it takes an hour to get
anywhere
—you’ve gotten used to Austin. New York is like Houston, only much worse.”

“I’m never going to see you!”

Aaron smiles. “Oh, it’ll be fine. We’ll have all weekend, and during the week you’ll be busy with school and performances, and God knows I’ll have enough to figure out with the new program and whatever they have me doing. But we can meet for dinner, or I can come up to you on some nights and just… stay for breakfast.”

“You mean booty calls.” Nik is grinning again, and Aaron is glad for it.

“I mean crashing at a friend’s place.”

“You mean spending the night with your boyfriend.”

Aaron startles a little—it’s been a long time since that word fit anything he was involved in, but it still feels good. “Well. I guess I do.”

The hotel room where they meet to practice and record is full of empty beer bottles and friendly faces, some of them half-remembered from long ago, when Nik and David were in high school together. Aaron spent so much time with Nik then, when they shuttled back and forth between their schools and their groups of friends, that the names come back easily. He’s not sur­prised that David has managed to keep so many friends from high school; people don’t often go far away for college here. Some of them had headed up the road to A&M with him, and he’s spent years seeing them around campus. Even so, it’s heartwarming how many friends dropped what they were doing and traveled to be here, and although a lot of these guys were at the party last night, they still seem to be enjoying their reunion. The handful of men from David’s chorus are friendly, polite and mingling well—it’s a pleasant room, warm and filled with excitement.

The rehearsal goes surprisingly smoothly, and Aaron revels in watching Nik manage it. He’s come so far, he’s
grown
so much. Nik has always been a leader, a voice that people turned to when they needed direction. At first, it had been natural—Aaron had always done the same, after all—but the more he’d come to know Nik, the sillier it had seemed. Nik wasn’t per­fect; he was an attention whore; he was too easily hurt and reactive because of his own experiences. This Nik, though, is
different
—he’s still likely to use humor to get what he needs out of people, but he wears his authority better, with more assurance that it’s owed him, and he’s not the same perfect little prince he was in high school.