100 Days (17 page)

“How are you?” he asks.

“Happy to hear from you, honey.”

“And Stephen?”

“You know your stepdad, always working,” she says, and Aiden can almost picture her waving a dismissive hand. “But he never misses dinner, and I always have flowers.”

“Glad to hear standards aren’t slipping just ‘cause I’m gone.”

“Don’t you worry, honey. He’s still terrified of you,” she says, her voice dripping with exaggerated reassurance, and Aiden suddenly feels a pang of longing to stand with her at the kitchen island, chopping vegetables and talking about hurricanes. “And you? How are you and Jake doing?”

“We’re fine,” he says. “Hey, am I catching you at a bad time?”

“Not at all! No, I’m just finishing up a few reports, so I’ve been letting my calls go to voicemail.”

“Any big storms heading in?”

“Sunny skies here, but there’s something forming out in the Caribbean that we think might get upgraded to a tropical storm soon,” Alice says, a note of barely masked excitement in her voice. Aiden knows very few people who love their job as much as his meteorologist mother does. Ever since she completed her training as a SKYWARN severe weather spotter, she’s gone in to work each morning with a brightness about her she hasn’t had in years.

“Yeah? Where’s it headed?”

“We don’t know just yet; we’re waiting for the NHC to confirm, but we should have a report by five. Anyway, enough about the
weather
! Where are you boys?”

“Mom, we’re on the way…” Aiden begins, pausing for effect, “to Graceland.”

“Graceland,” Alice breathes. “Oh, honey… will you take lots of pictures for me?”

“Of course. I know how you love Elvis,” Aiden says fondly. “I’ll get you some­thing from the gift shop and send it home next time we stop at a post office.”

“You’re a good boy. I’ve loved getting your postcards so much.”

“I try.”

“So what have you been up to this week? Anything exciting?”

Aiden bites his lip, wondering how much to tell her. For years, she’s been hoping that he and Jake would “end this silly ‘just friends’ charade,” but despite the many times they’ve had sex by now, they aren’t boyfriends.

“Honey?”

“I’m here, sorry,” he says, shooting a glance toward the cab. He stands up from the couch and takes the phone into the bedroom, slides the door mostly closed behind and sits down heavily on the bed. “Mom, Jake and I… we’re, um…”

There’s a long pause on the line, and then, “Are you boys being safe?”

“Mom!” Aiden yelps indignantly, his face growing hot.

“Oh hush, honey. I have a right to ask,” Alice says.

“Yes, Mom, we’re being safe,” Aiden grumbles.

“Good. Now tell me
everything!
I’ve been waiting
years
for you two to get your acts together!”

“Mom, we’re not…
together,
we’re just…” Aiden trails off and swallows, hard. He clears his throat and, feeling as if he’s telling a bald-faced lie, says succinctly, “We’re just seeing how things go.”

“I see. Well… if you’re happy for you, I’m happy for you,” she says, her words stilted but reassuringly warm. “Just be good to each other, you hear me? I’ve seen you two apart and it’s not pretty.”

“Oh my god, please don’t be talking about the fishing trip,” he says. “I was
seven,
Mom.”

“No, I just mean that I’ve seen it from both sides, and… it may not be entirely healthy, but being apart isn’t good for either of you, and I’d hate to see you get your hearts broken if this isn’t what you both want.”

“What do you mean, you’ve seen it from both sides?”

“While you were in London,” Alice says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “We had Jake and Charlie over for dinner every Saturday night. He just looked so sad, honey, especially when you weren’t able to make it home for Christmas. After that… most weeks he’d go up to your room after dinner and I’d hear him listening to that song you love—the one from that Zooey Deschanel movie.”

“‘Sweet Disposition?’” Aiden asks, swallowing hard against the sudden frac­ture in his mind. He looks at the mostly closed bedroom door, a single beam of light peeking through from the living area, and remembers lying on his single bed on Christmas Eve last year, listening to “When I Fall In Love” on a loop for two hours. Jake will never admit to a soul that it’s his favorite song, but Aiden knows better—if only because Jake turns it up every time they play it on Brunswick’s oldies station. “I, um… I didn’t know about that.”

“Well, of course you didn’t, honey. Jake wouldn’t want to upset you, and I’m sure he knew you were missing him just as much,” Alice says. “But that’s why I’m telling you. I just want you to be happy.”

“I’m trying,” Aiden replies. Quiet suddenly falls around him, and he clears his throat again. “Mom, I think we’re here so I’d better get going. We’ve got tickets for the tour and all, so…”

“Don’t forget about those pictures,” she reminds him.

“I won’t. Love you.”

“I love you too, honey.”

Aiden hangs up, feeling miserable, confused and peculiarly buoy­ant by turns. As he emerges from the bedroom, he catches sight of Jake stand­ing in the cab, leafing through the folder from the glove compartment and extract­ing print­outs for their booking with the Memphis-Graceland RV park and the tour of Graceland. His look is subdued again: straight-leg, vintage wash jeans and a nondescript white T-shirt under a black military jacket with small epaulettes on the shoulders. When he turns around, Aiden sees that he’s added a small pin above his chest pocket: the American flag.

“Aren’t you laying it on a little thick?” he asks.

“We’d be stupid not to take precautions,” Jake says with a shrug, neatly folding the sheets of paper in his hand as he comes closer. His eyes drop to the front of Aiden’s slim-fit black button-down. “I like this shirt on you. I don’t think I’ve seen it before.”

“I got in London,” Aiden says without thinking, and his stomach tightens as Jake’s eyes cloud for a moment and the shadow of a frown whispers across his features before it is swallowed by a tight smile. He wants to make that smile stretch from ear to ear, make Jake grin and laugh and be goofy and dumb, like he used to on the first day of every summer break when they went to the Brunswick Diner to split an ice cream sundae for breakfast. He steps forward and cups Jake’s face in his hands, watches as Jake’s eyes slip closed as if he knows exactly what’s coming, and kisses him firmly on the mouth. It still makes Aiden feel as if he’s tilting sideways, the feeling of Jake’s soft lips against his own, the way Jake yields and returns the pressure in equal measure; and for a moment he revels in it.

“What was that for?” Jake asks breathlessly when Aiden pulls back, drop­ping his hands to his sides.

“I just… wanted to kiss you.”

“Any particular reason?”

“That was Mom on the phone before,” Aiden says. “She told me you used to go over for dinner sometimes, while I was away.”

Jake’s features harden and Aiden’s stomach drops; the last time he saw that look on Jake’s face was over Skype, when Aiden told him he wasn’t coming back for Christmas.

“What else did she say?” Jake asks, his tone measured and so tightly con­trolled that Aiden knows it would be a mistake to say more. Instead, he takes Jake’s hand and tries to link their fingers, but Jake gently pulls out of his grasp. “What else did she say, Aiden?”

“Nothing,” Aiden lies. “She just told me about the dinners. Jake, I’m—”

“Let’s not talk about it.”

“Jake, come on, I—”

“No, Aiden!” Jake yells, rounding on him with fire in his eyes. Aiden takes half a step back, hands raised. “Last year was one of the worst years of my life, and I don’t want to talk about it with
anyone,
least of all you!”

“Well, I think we
should
talk about it,” Aiden says firmly.

“Why?” Jake asks, spreading his arms wide and letting out a laugh that sounds half-hysterical. “Why, so I can tell you about all the nights I spent waiting by my phone for a call or an email that never came? So I can tell you about going over to your house and up to your room to lis­ten to your favorite song like I was a fucking dog pining for its master? So I can tell you about how much I
hate
myself because I can’t listen to you talking about London or your internship without hating
you
a little bit, too?”

Aiden’s tentative, newfound sense of bravado is suddenly gone, broken by the dawning realization of what he put Jake through by not being there for him. At the time, Aiden had told himself that it was probably better for Jake not to hear about all of the amazing things he was doing and learning, considering that Jake had applied for the same internship—conveniently forgetting, of course, that Jake would have his own stories to share.

“You hate me?” he whispers, eyes trained on the stupid flag pin.

Jake sighs heavily and his shoulders drop. He wraps his arms around his middle and says, “Dan, of course I don’t hate you. I just hate what last year did to me, what it turned me into.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Look, let’s just…” Jake shakes his head and ducks to look into Aiden’s eyes with what appears to be an attempt at a reassuring smile. “Let’s just go. We’re almost late for our slot. Okay?”

He rubs both hands up and down Aiden’s arms, and Aiden returns his smile as best he can while believing he’s caused an irreparable rift in their friendship.

What if that’s what this is?
He thinks as he follows Jake out of the RV.
What if I caused this chasm to form between us, and the only way for us to fill it now is with sex?

What if this breaks us both?

Although Aiden manages to remember to take plenty of pictures, the tour almost completely passes him by. While Jake looks fully engaged by the tour guide, following everything she says with the kind of rapt at­ten­tion Aiden only ever saw him display in their Golden Age of Hollywood lec­tures, the mus­ty smell of the house is too close to the scent of the hall­way of his build­ing in London, and try as he might, Aiden can’t put any of it from his mind.

They progress through the tour quickly. Aiden barely takes in the grand mirrored staircase in the foyer, the clean, crisp white living room with its fifteen-foot couch, the dark wood and light countertops of the kitchen or the royal blue accents of the dining room. The billiard room, its walls covered in patterned fabric, only draws his full attention when it elicits a small gasp from Jake and excited whispers from the other members of their group. Upstairs in the jungle room, Jake leans over to murmur something about how Elvis had hotel rooms remodeled to look more like home while he was on the road. Aiden only nods, not trusting himself to open his mouth lest a litany of apologies fall from it; they are far too little, far too late.

He and Jake never apologize to one another. Rather than say, “I’m sorry,” Jake drove to Yarmouth to get Aiden a loaf of his favorite sourdough from Rosemont Market to make up for the one he ate when he was high. Rather than say, “I’m sorry,” Aiden stayed up all night to help Jake rewrite a paper, the only copy of which had literally been eaten by Stephen’s dog. Rather than say, “I’m sorry,” both of them arrived at their dorm room at the same time, carrying DVDs and bottles of Cuervo, and burst into laughter that swept away any lingering vestige of their disagreement about the cleaning schedule.

Once the tour is over, the glitz and shine of the vast array of post­humous awards in the racquetball building already fading from Aiden’s mind, the tour guide leaves the group in the Meditation Garden behind the main house, where they quietly pay their respects at the graves of Elvis and his closest family members.

He and Jake make a slow circuit of the garden’s small pool, watching the clear blue water and listening to the steady splash of the fountains. By the time they circle back around to stand at the foot of Elvis’s headstone, the rest of the group has moved off.

Jake stands with his arms crossed over his chest as he regards the smooth, dark stone and the tributes of flowers, flags and stuffed animals. As Aiden looks on, Jake removes the flag pin from the front of his jacket and places it on the corner of the marble. He straightens up and sighs.

Aiden glances around surreptitiously, checking to see that no one is in imme­diate earshot, and buries his hands in his pockets. He rocks back and forth on his feet a little to the rhythm he silently counts off, and when he hums the first line of “Always On My Mind,” it’s barely audible to his own ears. His voice grows louder as he settles into the tune that has always seemed to him as if Elvis somehow turned a physical ache into music. He keeps his gaze trained on the water beyond the headstone, and in his peripheral vision he sees Jake freeze. He wonders if Jake is thinking of all those times they apologized but didn’t, those times they showed it instead of saying it.

At the chorus, Aiden turns to look at Jake, and his voice wavers a little at the shock, bewilderment and turmoil in Jake’s eyes, a storm of deep green. Aiden pulls his hand from his pocket and reaches out to brush his knuckles against Jake’s hip.

“I was?” Jake asks thickly.

“Of
course
you were,” Aiden says. And then, because it feels important to say the actual words in a way he never has before, “I’m so sorry.”

Jake bites his lip. Then, faster than Aiden can register the movement, he throws his arms around Aiden’s neck and whispers into his skin. “Thank you.”

“I told you,” Aiden says quietly, wrapping his arms tightly around Jake’s waist.

“Told me what?”

“That I’d sing you a love song if you wanted me to.”

Jake sighs and shakes his head, murmurs, “Don’t ruin it, Dan,” and all at once, Aiden is harshly reminded of their agreement.

What happens on the road trip stays on the road trip.

Just then, he catches sight of a heavyset, middle-aged man approaching the headstones and regarding their embrace through dangerously narrowed eyes. Reminded of exactly where they are and how careful they have to be, Aiden thinks quickly. He gestures to the man in his arms and, with an exaggerated eye-roll, explains, “He’s a
big
fan.”