The Luckiest (2 page)

Sunday

A
aron’s eyes are
gritty by the time he pulls to a stop outside the house, and he winces as his headlights bounce off cars he’s known since high school, now decorated with a few more college bumper stickers. He sighs and closes his eyes against the glare from the bumpers and tailgates and leans back against the headrest with a rueful grin; only a few years ago, two hours wouldn’t have seemed like such a long drive, but he’s been in New York long enough to become unaccustomed to that much time behind the wheel.

He’d meant to get away from the house he grew up in by noon, but his aunt Karen had called the house to dangle one more lunch at his favorite café in front of him; his mother had urged him to spend some more time with her and the thought of one of those burgers before he had to face the music was too good to pass up. And then while they were at lunch, his cousin Josh had called his mom from work, wanting to see Aaron one more time before the wedding, and his aunt Karen had mentioned that she had a half-gallon of the newest Blue Bell flavor at her house—chocolate with a marshmallow swirl and a whole bunch of chocolate-covered nuts, she said—and Aaron had sat there, surrounded by the kitsch, in the favorite restaurant of his thirteen-year-old self and stared at the bowl of pickled jalapenos next to his plate and
felt
it, felt the pull of home in the sweet cream of a half-gallon carton. He can’t ever admit it to anybody, can’t bear to say out loud, that it still works on him like that, but the fact is it’s damn good ice cream, and he can’t get it in New York, and Häagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry’s aren’t the same at
all,
no matter what his friends and roommates may argue, and there are some things a native Texan is never going to pass up, especially in the mid­dle of summer.

Once he’d been back to aunt Karen’s so Josh could come by and then made it back to his mom’s house one last time and he’d eaten more than one man should ever be allowed, it was almost eight when he got on the road. This was unfortunate—he hated driving after dark, always had—but leaving his mom’s house was harder since the breast cancer scare two years ago. His mom blew off his concerns when he finally mentioned them, but to Aaron’s eyes she looked drawn, tired. When he had a minute to talk alone with Karen, she insisted that his mom was fine, that the doctors’ reports were all normal and Aaron was seeing the aging process, which seemed accelerated because of his long absences.

Maybe she’s right—some days it seems as if everything is changing so fast—but his mom is still a year shy of fifty, and Aaron worries about her. It’s his job, worrying about her; it has been for years, because who else is going to do it?

This whole trip home is a mess.

He doesn’t want to feel this way; he wants to be happy for his friends and happy to spend some time with them, so he sits there in his car—his beloved old Chevy Tahoe that his mom pays the neighbor kid in Easter banana pudding, Thanksgiving pies and Christmas tamales to keep in excellent condition so it’s always ready for him—and he waits and listens to music on his phone for just a minute more.

He’s had six months of lead time and over an hour on the road—almost seventy-five minutes of estuaries and salt marshes, oil refineries and smokestacks, the crush of cars on the bridge to the island, and beach-town Sunday night traffic—to get used to the idea of what’s waiting for him inside this house and he’s still stalling. He hasn’t seen most of his friends since Christmas, and he’s excited to be with the people who make up the rest of his family and with whom there’s been far too little time over the last few years; but he also knows that Nik is inside.

When he thinks about Nik, he sighs, and even then he feels his face stretch into a smile. Sometimes he hates that this is still his reaction—sometimes, when he’s drunk, he decides that he’s done all the thinking and had all the heartbreak over Nik that one lifetime could stand. Sometimes he writes about it, long rambling essays that are half sepia-toned reminiscence and half personal screed, and he’s pretty sure that nobody who has ever read them recognizes them for exactly what they are: little love letters of rage. But leaving New York for his mom’s house and then leaving his mom’s house for here has been like tripping out of one set of worries only to rush straight into another. He’s not sure he’s ready for this one; he’s not sure he’s ready to take on Nik, not yet.

They’ve seen each other plenty over the last few years, and for the most part those visits have been fine. But they were just parties, dinner, quick evenings out being young and stupid. He’s looking now at spending a
week
in a beautiful beach house with his ex, the one who broke his heart and then disappeared—only he never had the courtesy to disappear
properly
, the bastard—while they help their best friends plan their wedding. And Alex and David deserve,
deserve
a week of laughter followed by the best day of their lives, and Aaron can’t wait to see them. He can do this. But dear God, it’s going to be hard.

Aaron is rubbing his eyes again, when he feels a tap at the window right beside his head. He jumps and looks out the window; thank God, there’s Jasmine’s toothy smile in the yellow glow of a sulfur streetlight. He grins at her, turns down the music and rolls down the window. “Hey there, pretty girl. Want a ride?”

“Mister, get your ass out of that car and give me a hug. Five
months
, Aaron! Reading your blog is not the
same
!” She pulls at the door and he’s laughing, turning off his ignition and whipping off his seat belt so he can slide out of the car to squeeze her tight.

Sticky summer air settles heavily against his skin, and he sucks in a breath full of cigarette smoke, the patchouli in her hair and the salt of sweat and seawater; the combination feels like home. He’s known her since they shared a table in the fourth grade, and they’ve had their ups and downs; but from the time Jasmine Sawyer declared herself Doris to his Montgomery after they watched the original
Fame
when the new movie came out—because they’d
desperately
needed a palate cleanser, and possibly new eyes altogether—they had been there for each other. She’d held his hand and listened to him cry over his mom and his dad and his grandparents, over the injustice of high school, over Nik, over difficult living situations and arguments with roommates and disagreements with professors and issues at work and so many boys. She’d hated her brother and hated her parents, and for a while there seemed to hate everybody; and then she learned to love a few people and gave up her Torrid wardrobe, to his eternal gratitude.

She’s his very first
girl,
the original model, and he’ll never be anything but glad to see her—even now, when she’s a little too thin in cutoff shorts and a loose embroidered top. Her dishwater blonde hair is in messy braids, and the ring in her nose glints silver above her bright smile.

“How are you, princess?”

“I am taking it one day at a time, Aaron,” she says, her sigh heavy.

“Oh no. Alex? Or Mitchell? Or—oh God—not Alex
and
Mitchell?
Scandalous!
” Aaron has known since middle school that if he can get her to laugh, everything will eventually be okay in the world.

“Oh good lord, do not give me those mental images,” she says, smiling and shoving some loose hair out of her face. Well, it’s a start. “Both, actually—we’re ‘on a break’ again, although he’ll be here on Saturday. And Alex—she’s fine, she’s just kind of
crazy
excited about this bride thing, and we need Ritalin or something, because that girl—”

Jasmine is interrupted by an ear-splitting, “AARR­OOOOOOOOOON OH MY GOD AARON!” Alex rockets down the front porch steps, barefoot in a pair of cutoff jeans and a tank top, trailed by an only slightly less enthusiastic Stephanie and then by David, who beams from ear to ear and strolls sedately behind them.

Alex hits Aaron like a truck, and he staggers back into the side of the Tahoe under the weight; both of them are giggling. He hasn’t seen her since Christmas break, when he’d been over at her house helping her pack for New Year’s at David’s just days before the proposal they’d all known was coming but nobody dreamed would come so
soon.

She pulls back, still laughing as her dark hair falls across her face, and God, she’s so
happy.
College has been so good for Alex;
David
has been so good for her. The little gothy girl he’d known is still under there—earrings still dot all the way up one of her ears, a sparkling little trail buried under all that hair—but her sarcasm is blunted. Aaron’s been on the oppo­site trajectory, but he’s pretty sure that’s what happens to some people when they fall so completely in love that they can’t wait for what happens tomorrow.

Stephanie hugs him and squeals at him. They’d been to­gether just weeks before, when she was in town to talk with an editor her advisor knew at the
Voice
and a reporter her parents knew at the
Amsterdam News
. Her parents financed her trip. Aaron had swung by for lunch between the two meetings and noted how she glowed with the certainty of her own success, the thrill of the chase and the chill of a spring breeze against her cheeks. She’d tucked her hand into his arm and marched them up the street; her white coat was stunning against her dark skin. She was perfectly sure that the world would make room for her, but Aaron thought about how he still didn’t feel confident enough to take up his own share of the sidewalk.

David finally strolls up with his hands in his pockets, his usual easy, friendly smile spread across his handsome face. He looks almost exactly the same as he did the first time Aaron met him years ago on a boardwalk, standing under a Ferris wheel; the only difference is that this time, Aaron isn’t distracted by David’s cute best friend standing next to him.

“Aaron, it’s good to see you, man. I’m glad you’re here,” David says, and holds out his hand for Aaron to shake.

It has never
not
been a little awkward, these last few years. Aaron first met David years ago, back when David and Nik were next-door neighbors and went everywhere as a package deal—long before Nik and Aaron became a very different kind of package. Then Jasmine and David met again during their first semester of college, when Jasmine won a spot in a student a cappella group—the first extracurricular activity she pursued there, to Aaron’s great surprise. What started with a simple text message—”You will never guess who was at my audition today! That cute friend of Nik’s, the black guy with the ears and the gorgeous smile?”—spiraled so far that sometimes Aaron can’t believe it actually happened, is
still
happening. Jasmine and Alex were roommates, so once Jasmine brought Alex and David together there were endless opportunities for them to be thrown together, and there was no stopping them. And that had forever changed Aaron’s relationship with all of them.

It’s gotten easier, sure—he and David have a different kind of friendship now than they did when David was just Nik’s best friend. Aaron comes with Alex—that deal was sealed a long time ago—and David and Nik are the same way. They’ve figured out how to make it work, and David has never said a word to Aaron about how awkward it must be for him, but Aaron has always wondered what Nik and David say to each other about him. He’s seen them with their dark heads bent together at parties and dinners, and sometimes one or both of them will look up at him while they’re talking and give him a little embarrassed smile before looking back down and he knows they’re talking about him.

But now, as David shakes his hand and welcomes him to his wedding, Aaron appreciates him for what he is—a good man, a kind person, the person one of his dearest girls is going to marry. David is good for her, stronger than Andy ever was: a rock who doesn’t need Alex to do or be anything except his partner. Aaron pulls David a little closer, into the kind of manly hug they’ve been exchanging for years now. They may not be close—they can’t be, there’s way too much in the way—but this they can do.

David goes to the back of the Tahoe and pulls Aaron’s bags out while Alex and Stephanie continue to buzz around Aaron, chattering nonstop. He meets Jasmine’s eyes over their heads and raises a brow, and she rolls her eyes and mouths “later” at him before she lights a cigarette. It takes him a second to remember that—right—she was telling him her story. He blows her a kiss, then grabs her arm and drags her to the back of the Tahoe so he can help David.

The house still looks the same, and Aaron remem­bers moments of weekends past. He swears he can still see a hint of shim­mer in the den carpet, and recalls making promotional posters for the newspaper with Stephanie the summer before their senior year, trying to find new writers to inherit their baby, and the fight over the big glitter canister that he’d defin­itively ended by dumping it over Stephanie’s head. “There, fine, you’re the biggest star of all. Are you happy
now?”
he’d sniped, and she’d stood there, her big brown eyes blazing with fury. It’s a good memory, and not only because of the way Nik laughed at them after he’d pulled Aaron from the room and kissed him until he calmed down.