The Road to Amazing (20 page)

Knowing Gunnar, he was probably out
collecting slugs.

After a few seconds of silence, Nate
said, "This is quite a chinwag. Not like any buck's night I've ever
been to."

"I don't know what any of that means,"
Kevin said. "And keep in mind that I lived with you for three
years."

Nate laughed. "A chinwag is a
conversation. And a buck's night is what we call a bachelor party
Down Under."

"You do that on purpose, don't you?"
Kevin said. "All that slang? You think you're being
charming."

Nate preened for the camera. "But
admit it — it works." He was quiet for another second, then he
said, "I got my heart broken, right before I came here."

Nate had a story to tell too? This
surprised me a bit.

"Mia?" Kevin said, and Nate
nodded.

"Well," Nate said, "I
guess I should tell the whole story. I actually met her at the
pool, swimming laps. And there's something about meeting someone in
your budgie smuggler." He looked at Kevin. "My
Speedo
. Happy?"

"Somewhat," Kevin said.

"It doesn't leave a lot to the
imagination," Nate said, "which I guess you guys already
know."

"I'll say," Vernie muttered, and
everyone laughed.

"Anyway, it was interesting, seeing
her in her swim suit," Nate said, "and having her see me, knowing
how we look almost naked, but not knowing anything else about each
other. I didn't even know if she was single, or straight, but one
day I took a chance and asked her out. And she said yes. We met at
the restaurant, and at first we didn't even recognize each other in
clothes and with dry hair. We stood in a crowded lobby together for
at least two minutes before we realized who we were. It was almost
like we'd been expecting each other to show up for the date in our
swim suits."

Not the worst idea I've
ever heard
, I thought.

"We talked for hours," Nate said, "and
I thought it went great. So I ask her out on a second date, and
once again she says yes. Then I keep asking, and she keeps saying
yes until finally we are definitely 'dating.' Then one night I say,
'I love you.' And she immediately says, 'I love you too.' So I
think we're in love, and for six months, we do all the things
people do when they're in love. Then I ask her, 'Do you want to
move in with me?' And she says, 'Yeah.' So she does. And I'm
thinking everything is great.

"Then one day she comes to
me and says, 'I'm not happy. I think we should take a breather.'
And I ask her, 'Do you still love me?' And she says, 'I'm not sure,
that's what I need to find out.' I was completely gutted, exactly
like a fish. But a couple of days later, I ask her, 'Did you
ever
love me?' and she
says, 'Of course I did.' That's when I looked back on our
relationship, and I realized that at every point where someone
asked a question, I was the one doing the asking, and she was the
one saying yes. So I don't think she ever did — love me, I
mean.

"At first I felt pretty
stupid about that, that I hadn't seen it. And I was mad at her too,
for not being honest. But then I realized that it wasn't
necessarily us, it was the whole system that was screwed up. The
guy is
supposed
to ask the girl out. If
she
does it, some people think there's something
wrong. And he's supposed to be the first person to say 'I love
you,' and all the rest. That's what's so screwed up about the whole
thing. How could I have known? It was all perfectly normal, but it
means people aren't honest about what they want, about what they
really feel. If it hadn't been for that stupid script in our heads,
maybe I would have sensed her hesitation, or maybe she would have
been more honest with me."

He fell silent, and once again no one
said anything.

There was a "poor little
rich kid" quality to Nate's story, but it was still kind of
touching. Then there was the
actual
touching that Nate had done during his
striptease, all in the name of our bachelor party. Taken all
together, I was starting to think that maybe I'd misjudged him —
that he was a pretty decent guy after all.

I turned to Kevin, who looked like he
was about to say something to the group, to reveal his great truth.
I was glad, because I was still curious what he was thinking, if
I'd distracted him from being worried about the wedding
tomorrow.

Suddenly the lights flickered and came
back on.

"
Whoa
," Ruby said,
surprised.

It was definitely disorienting, like
someone unexpectedly yanking a blanket off your head. It also felt
awkward after the intimacy of the last few minutes, seeing everyone
in the clear light again.

People shifted in their seats, and
Nate stood up to stretch. The vibe of the evening was changing yet
again.

A second later, Gunnar rejoined the
group.

"Gunnar!" I said. "Where were you?
Look, the power's back on."

"Not the power," he said. "That's
still out. This is the generator."

"The house has a generator?" I didn't
remember Christie saying anything about this either. Clearly, that
house walk-through we'd done with her had been for shit.

Gunnar nodded.

"How did you know?" I
asked.

"I didn't," he said. "But I looked
around and I found one outside. There's plenty of propane too.
We're good for the whole weekend."

"But how did you know how
to—? No, wait, never mind." This
was
Gunnar, after all.

Gunnar looked over at Kevin. "I
figured you'd want power for the wedding, right?" he said. "Even if
the power comes back on, I didn't want you guys worrying about
it."

Kevin stared at him, and even now I
couldn't quite tell what he was thinking.

"Besides," Gunnar went on, "I told you
before. It's my wedding gift to you. I'm making sure nothing gets
in the way of your wedding."

"Thanks, Gunnar," Kevin said, nodding
deeply.

"Yeah, thanks," I said, feeling stupid
about the mean-ish things I'd been thinking about him
before.

After that, everyone wandered back to
the kitchen for more food and drinks, and I happened to notice the
dry-erase boards sitting on the floor, including the one Kevin had
been using.

I couldn't resist flipping it over to
see what he'd written about what he thought we were going to be
like in fifty years.

Of course it was blank. But for the
life of me, I couldn't decide if that was a good thing or a bad
one.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

When I joined Kevin in the master
bedroom that night, he was staring out the picture window, into the
big black void of darkness. He was only wearing his t-shirt and
boxer briefs — already ready for bed.

"Hey, there," I said. "How are you
doing?"

"Fine," he said quietly.

I walked closer, but stopped behind
him, before I was standing right next to him.

"That was pretty amazing tonight,
wasn't it?" I said. "I mean, all those stories people
told?"

I saw the back of his head
nod.

"I didn't know any of that," I said,
"about Vernie or Otto. And Ruby? How fantastic was
that?"

This time he didn't nod.

That's when I knew:
Kevin
was
still
freaked out about the wedding, about everything that had gone wrong
this weekend.

I stepped up next to him at the
window. It was kind of pointless, because you still couldn't see
anything at all, not even the distant lights across the bay. It was
just a big black rectangle that showed the vague reflections of the
room in the glass — and the mirror images of Kevin and me. But I
could tell that it was still raining outside, at least a little,
with droplets gently tapping against the glass.

"It's going to be okay," I
said.

He didn't say anything, but I saw his
face darken in the window's reflection.

I reached out to touch him.

He pulled away ever so
slightly. "How can you say that? Everything that could possibly go
wrong this weekend has gone wrong. A power outage? Rabid bats?
A
dead killer whale
? Seriously?"

"Everything that could
possibly go wrong has not gone wrong," I said. "And didn't you hear
Min? It wasn't a killer whale, it was an
orca
."

He faced me, not quite
angry, but weirdly alert. "How can you
say
that?" he said again, completely
ignoring my orca joke. "
Everything
has gone wrong."

"There haven't been any locusts," I
said. "Or frogs. Or...huh. I can't think of any of the other ten
plagues of Egypt. I can only think of two plagues? Really? How
depressing is that?"

I wasn't sure if more humor was the
right tact to take here, but I'd tried talking through his
anxieties with him before, and I'd also tried distracting him. None
of that had seemed to work, so I didn't know what else to
do.

"Okay, you're right, I was
wrong," Kevin said sarcastically. "It's not
everything
that could possibly go
wrong. We haven't experienced the ten plagues of Egypt."

"Yeah, but now I'm
curious. What
are
they?" I started looking them up on my phone.

"Lice," Kevin said quietly.

I looked up at him.

"That's one of the ten plagues," he
said.

I smiled, even as I started reading my
phone. "Oh! You're right, that is one. And water into blood — duh,
that one's right in the movie. Then frogs, which I said. And wild
animals, possibly flies. Can you believe it says that — 'Wild
animals, possibly flies'? They don't even know? Then diseased
livestock, boils, thunderstorms of hail and fire, locusts, and
death of the firstborn. Boils? Wow. I mean, technically death of
the firstborn is worse, but who wants boils?"

Kevin sulked a bit, then he said,
"What about the rabid bat? That could qualify as a wild animal. Or
maybe it's closer to diseased livestock — it could go either
way."

"Look, I'll grant you wild
animals
and
diseased livestock," I said. "That's still only two plagues —
two out of
ten
.
You said 'everything' that could go wrong has gone wrong, but
clearly you were wrong. So admit you overreacted."

Something flashed in the blackness of
the window next to us — lightning out across the water, so bright
that we couldn't miss it. But it happened so quickly that by the
time we both turned to look at it, the sky had darkened again, and
the window was exactly as black as before. A second later, thunder
rumbled.

"There!" Kevin said. "Did
you hear
that
?"

"The thunder?"

"Yes! That's three! We're
now up to
three
of the ten plagues of Egypt!"

"What?" I said, confused.

"You literally just listed thunder as
one of the ten plagues! Thirty seconds later, it starts to thunder.
And you're seriously trying to tell me we're not cursed? What's
next, attacking mummies?"

"Just to be clear," I
said, "Wikipedia said thunderstorms of
hail and fire
."

"Well, maybe that's what it was!" He
pursed his lips in an exaggerated kind of way.

I smiled, because now we
were both in on the joke. In other words, I'd been right to use
humor with Kevin. It made me happy, and a little proud, knowing
that I'd finally found the right thing to say to make him feel
better. (Also, and I definitely wasn't going to mention this to
Kevin again, it really was nice to have
him
be the neurotic one for a
change, not me.)

I turned to him and held him, and he
immediately held me back, burying his face in my neck, almost even
whimpering a little. He was warm, and a little damp, and his hair
was wet — it smelled like his Brut shampoo. He must have taken a
shower right before I got there.

"Kevin."

"What?" he said, his voice muffled by
the collar of my shirt.

"Everything's going to be
okay. Yes, you're right, a few things have gone wrong. But
everything that happened, we fixed it —
Gunnar
fixed it. If anything else
goes wrong, we'll fix that too."

He nodded. "I know. It's
just..."

"What?"

He pulled back and turned around, even
as I kept holding him in my arms from behind. It felt a little bit
like one of those paintings you see of the Madonna and the dying
Jesus (but in a good way).

He didn't say anything.