The Luckiest (18 page)

“Oh,
God
yes,” Nik says, his speech already thin and slurred as he starts to drift, just a little.

“Okay,” Aaron whispers. He peppers kisses across Nik’s neck, just at the bottom of his hairline, and rolls Nik’s balls in his hand and just holds them there, soft and tender. The house is so quiet, and his heart is so full; this might be the most calmly intimate moment of his life so far, timing his breathing with Nik’s and listening to the fan rustle a few papers across the room. Nik jerks just one time as he falls asleep; his whole body shocks awake for a second, and when he wakes up enough to whisper, “Aaron, love you,” his voice is almost gone. For one sleepy, half-awake moment, all the joy and responsibility of taking care of Nik, of being careful with him and loving him the way he deserves, sweeps over Aaron, a wave of tenderness that he might find suspect in the daytime.

And then it’s gone. It slips away between one breath and the next as Aaron murmurs “Love you too” into Nik’s hair and follows him into sleep.

In Their Own Words

A
n email from
Aaron sent Saturday, June 12, 2010:

Dear Nik,

I’m putting this into words because I need to. The journalist in me needs to report on it, because this is a story the world needs to know about. And important requests should always be made in writing.

I’ve been home for two hours. I’ve unpacked, I’ve taken another shower, I’ve checked in on my mom and I’ve pulled some ground venison out of the freezer to thaw. I feel unfo­cused and unsettled. I feel strange in my body. It took me two hours to realize that I feel lonely.

We spent the night together last night, a whole night, just the two of us. You were there, but the facts still require report­ing: We enlisted our friends and we lied to our families and we got a hotel room. You took me to eat oysters and then you made me laugh so hard I choked on them and then you took me to bed. I brought the necessary supplies and you brought an endless supply of patience. You told me you loved me and I told you to prove it, and you did. It hasn’t even been a year, and I’m surer of you than just about anybody. You are part of my family.

Here is a thing I want you to think about: What if we didn’t have to lie to make nights like last night happen? What if we spent this last year in high school as our last year in Texas? You know how badly I want to get out of here, and you know how badly I want to go everywhere with you. Come with me. In three months we’ll start school and suffer through one more sweaty Texas autumn. By next year, let us be somewhere where the leaves change colors, where we don’t have to worry about our parents knowing everybody in a twenty-mile radius, where we can be on our own. Dorms in big cities can cover a multitude of sins, and I want to commit every one of them with you.

I love you,

Aaron

Saturday

A
aron had set
his alarm for early, but when he wakes half an hour past the time he’d meant to get up, he sees that it’s been turned off and Nik is gone. He lies in bed for just a moment and thinks about everything he has to do today, about Alex’s wedding, about tonight. He thinks about telling Nik that he loves him. It had felt right so very suddenly, without space for planning or an actual agenda, and for a moment he lets himself worry about that. But then he thinks about last night, about how quiet the room had been, about falling asleep holding Nik, about how
easy
it all still is between them. And he thinks about how hard the last four years have been, and stretches and smiles.

His bedroom door opens, and Nik peeks in. “Oh. You’re awake,” he says. He pushes the door open and pads in on stock­ing feet to sit on the edge of the bed. He wears a T-shirt and run­ning shorts, and he’s sweaty and his hair has started to go a little frizzy around his face. His eyes are bright, though, and he looks happy, alive.

“Just barely. I assume you’re the person who turned off my alarm?”

Nik smiles sheepishly. “Guilty. But you were sleeping pretty hard, and I thought I could buy you another thirty minutes. Is that okay?”

Aaron stretches, and says, “It’s fine. I have a lot to do, but it was nice to wake up on my own.” He looks at Nik, stretches out a hand and says, “Did you get enough sleep? C’mere.”

Nik says, “I’m fine. I’m all sweaty, though,” but he leans down anyway.

“Don’t care,” Aaron mumbles against Nik’s lips, sliding a hand into Nik’s hair and tangling it there. He wants to pull Nik back to bed, wants a do-over for last night and a simpler, more joyous reenactment of the other morning; but he can’t shake the lists running through his head, and when Nik pulls back to rest his forehead against Aaron’s and run his hand down Aaron’s side, Aaron shivers and then throws back the blankets.

“You’re getting up already?” Nik pouts, hovering over Aaron and looking adorable.

“No rest for the wickedly fantastic. How many more CDs do we have to finish?”

Nik pulls a face. “About forty?”

“Forty?” Aaron pushes out of bed and stands, running his hands through his hair. “You said we were almost done!”

“I know, I just didn’t want you trying to stay up to finish them.”

“Nik!” Aaron is frazzled now. He looks for his laptop, which he can’t find anywhere.

“Hey, relax.” Nik stands and grabs Aaron’s shoulders. “Relax, okay? We’ll get them done. I put a pair on when I left on my run, and two more when I got back. In a minute I’ll go do two more, and then we’re down to almost thirty. It’s fine, okay? It’ll be fine.”

Aaron looks at him and breathes. “I need to make a list.”

“That’s fine. Hey—” Nik squeezes Aaron’s shoulders. “We’ll get it done, okay? We don’t really need to start getting ready until like four, and it’s only eight. We have
tons
of time.”

By noon, Aaron begins to think Nik was right. At ten the screen door had slammed and the house was suddenly filled with a sea of old friends, eager to pitch in. Aaron and Nik pressed Bianca and Shelby into service keeping an eye on the laptops while they burned the last of the CDs. They both threatened Bianca with some future, unknown repayment to keep her from rummaging in their hard drives, but Shelby lifted her chin and said she’d keep Bianca in line. God help them all. Josh and Joe drove together and were glad to take some time to lounge on the sofa and catch up with everybody.

They still present as the funny-looking pair they always have: Josh the shorter, solid working-class white guy in jeans and steel-toed boots, and Joe… well. Joe has
always
looked good, and before they really knew him, Jasmine code-named him “Mario” for his resemblance to Mario Lopez so she could gossip about him with impunity. The comparison still holds, unfortunately; Aaron despises Mario Lopez, but he’s never had anything bad to say about Joe.

Josh and Joe’s friendship has amazed Aaron over the last couple of years; there was a time when he envied it, because even if he and Josh are as different as two blood relatives could possibly be, Josh is still the closest thing he’ll ever have to a sibling, and when Joe showed up, he basically became Josh’s brother.

Joe Harper, his four brothers and sisters and his mom had moved back to San Antonio the summer before senior year, breaking Jasmine’s heart and leaving a surprising hole in Aaron’s life. Aaron remembers thinking at the time that none of his friends had understood how much they appreciated Joe and his quiet strength until he was gone. There had been one last party at Josh’s house while Aunt Karen was working nights, a spirited going-away that turned weepier as the night went on and everybody got drunker, and then that had been it, except for Facebook.

In the spring of their first year out of high school, Joe men­tioned on Facebook that he was thinking about going to Alaska to work for the summer. He was still in school at one of the community colleges, but even with the little scholarships he’d picked up, paying for it was rough and he thought he needed to earn a little cash, to be physical for a few months, and besides that he was looking for a place to be far away from everything going on with his family. Aaron wasn’t surprised to see the post, had thought it was probably a good move for Joe, and hadn’t thought much more about it.

Two days after Aaron got back to Texas the summer after his freshman year in college, Josh had shown up at his house for dinner with Joe trailing him sheepishly, his crooked white grin familiar and welcome. Aaron still doesn’t know all the details of how it happened, particularly what Josh said to convince his mom to let it happen, but Joe spent the rest of the summer sleeping on the floor of Josh’s room. He was apparently a dream houseguest, up every morning to make breakfast before heading out to work for the day, and Aunt Karen was ready to adopt him by the time the summer was over. Mom told him that Karen cried when Joe left to go back to San Antonio because his mom sprained her foot and needed help.

It’s always a bit awkward for the first hour or so, integrating Joe back into even this increasingly loose-knit group. Most of them share so many things that Joe just doesn’t get, especially related to the events of senior year, and when they’re together there’s always a tendency to fall back on those jokes and mem­ories. And, too, there’s the Jasmine issue; she’d been hurt by the way he left, by how sudden his departure was, and the last few times Joe was around she’d been quiet.

But Joe and Alex and David had bonded during that summer Joe spent back in Houston and had even gone to San Anto­nio to visit once or twice, and the joy on Alex’s face when he walks in now, sweeps her up and twirls her in a circle makes Aaron smile.

So Josh and Joe sprawl across one of the sofas and the girls cluster around them, perched on the arms and, in Alex’s case, draping across the guys themselves, and they all flip through photos on Joe’s phone as he talks about what he’s been doing since he dropped out of school, about working down in Corpus Christi fixing boat engines and the sagging porches of summer houses. Alex pokes his cheek and tells him that he looks just like her favorite stripper from the night before, “Fabian,” all tanned skin and shiny hair and white teeth.

The CD project is finally completed, and Shelby and Bianca drift in right after Aaron finishes cutting garnishes for Mia. Nik and David finish walking over the property, making sure they’re ready for last details. One by one they all reconvene in the living room, ready for one last quiet moment together.

Eventually Stephanie orders more pizza—so much pizza this week, it’s ridiculous, but it’s cheap and fast and Mia and Nicole have been glaring at people who set foot in the kitchen after ten a.m. and pizza can come to
them,
which is really the important point—and suddenly it’s two p.m. During a lull in the conversation, Aaron looks at Alex, and when she makes eye contact she gives him a nervous smile, and then a nod.

“Okay, people,” Aaron says, raising his voice both in volume and pitch. “I think it’s time to handle the last-minute details, and then we have to start getting ready. Alex and David are getting married today.”

They’re all quiet for a second, stalling while that settles in, and then the whole room breaks out into grins and they start hauling themselves off the sofas. The florists are coming in an hour so the flowers don’t just wilt in the afternoon sun, and the last thing they need to do is put out the candles. While Stephanie and Nicole gather the pizza boxes and paper plates into trash bags and Tu fiddles with his camera, Aaron hauls David, Nik, Josh and Joe over to the boxes of impromptu lanterns.

Aaron stacks a couple of boxes in each of their arms, and everything is going
fine
until Josh stumbles over an invisible seam in the carpets and plows into David’s back, who in turn tips forward, dropping his boxes on the ground. Josh,
being Josh,
immediately drops his boxes as well and rushes to David’s aid to help him up, all while Aaron looks on in growing horror.

Alex rushes over, pulls David to his feet and brushes him off. David’s “I’m fine, no, seriously, I’m
fine,”
rises over the general mayhem of the room, and all Aaron can see for one moment is how wide Shelby’s eyes are over the hand she’s raised to cover her mouth in horror. And then everything is moving again.

David
is
fine, just a little red at the knees where he slid for­ward across the carpet, but both his and Josh’s boxes have fallen upside down, spilling jars and tea lights and oh, God, sand is
everywhere,
all over the carpet.

“Stephanie! We need a vacuum cleaner!” Aaron calls out, his hands on his hips as he surveys the damage.

She runs in from the kitchen and stands agape while a hor­rified silence falls over the room again, and then she says, “Oh, damn. Well. Actually, I think glitter was preferable.”

Two hours later, they’ve set up outside and cleaned up the mess in the living room and everybody has rushed off to shower and dress. It’s still only four, but they have to be prepared for guests, and the florists have just left, Tu has snapped pictures and Aaron has declared the space on the lawn ready. They’d played around there for a few minutes once the candles and flowers were in place; David swept Alex into a dance without music while everybody else looked on and murmured happily.

Aaron and Nik move around each other gracefully as they shower and change. Aaron, always concerned about creases, is waiting until the last possible minute to slip into his linen trousers, and Nik waits to put on his tie and jacket until he’s shaved and finished his hair.

While they jockey for mirror space, Nik finishes patting on his aftershave and says, “So you’re leaving tomorrow?”

Aaron freezes, hand halfway to his hair. “Yes. I am.” He shakes his head and goes back to fiddling with that last recal­citrant strand. “I can’t believe I forgot.”

“What are you going back to?”

“Well, like I said—I’ll be in Texas until next Saturday morn­ing. I don’t think there’s anything planned for that week, just spending time with my mom. And then I have to get back to New York, because I’m starting another new job the Monday after—I’m going to be an office assistant for the new department for the summer. Part of my package.”

Nik grins while he squeezes a dollop of product into his hand and leaves the obvious joke unuttered; Aaron
loves
him for it. “Are you nervous about it?”

“Of course. I mean, not
really
,” Aaron says with a shrug. “I barely know anybody there, but I know the type and I worked at NYU the whole time I was there. And the first week will likely be more of the same, just with new faces.” He finishes with his hair and leans forward to look at his face a little more closely, trying to decide if the situation on his chin is likely to go critical; the humidity here is great for skin long-term because it helps prevent aging, but in the short-term it can be a disaster. “If anything, I’m scared of the new program. I don’t want to give them anything to regret before classes start. I don’t… I know I’m fine, I do. It’s just the newness of it.” He rinses his hands and dries them on a towel.

Nik runs the last bit of product through his hair and starts to arrange his curls, wrapping them around his fingers. “Who would have thought that’s where you’d be? Back when we met, I mean.”

“Well. I mean: Me, for one. Not necessarily THERE, but I was never going to stay here. That was the whole point.” He leans back, turns to look at Nik and then puts his hand on Nik’s shoulder, nods to his hair and says, “Can I?”

Nik shuffles over in front of him. “What does your mom think about that?” he says, lowering his head a little.

Aaron gets his hands in Nik’s hair and twists the curls. “Oh, you know my mom. She doesn’t quite understand how I came from her, and she still tells everybody all about it. Mostly what she tells them is how hard I work, because
that
is something she sure as hell understands.” Aaron smiles at Nik’s hair, at how newly familiar it still feels, slipping through his fingers. “I will tell you, though, just between us?” He leans forward and whispers, “Sometimes I still feel like such a fraud.”