The Luckiest (11 page)

Aaron puts his heads in his hands and moans, “Oh my God, I hate you all.”

“Ease up, man. It’s already Wednesday; you can wait until Saturday.”

Nik leans over to Aaron and whispers in his ear, “Don’t hate me; I’m going to be a teacher. I can find a creative way around
anything.”

* * *

Wednesday is the day the entire house starts to feel the wedding bearing down on them—there’s so much to be done. Aaron sends Mia and Nicole off with the shopping list for the food and liquor and finally entrusts Stephanie with the keys to his car after it becomes clear that the alterations to Jasmine’s dress will take longer than he thought and he isn’t going
anywhere
until they’re finished. It takes until two that afternoon before everybody is satisfied with the final result, and then he sits down with Alex and Jasmine to finish their hair and makeup negotiations over salads they throw together from last night’s leftovers.

He recruits them to help with the cake decorations after lunch; they’ve agreed to use violets from the Baxter’s flower flats—Stephanie swore her mother wouldn’t care, and with luck he’ll be back on the East Coast before she notices. But Alex also likes the look of jeweled cake picks and a fantastic—gaudy, but definitely fun—rhinestone monogram for the top of the cake. He gets them started making picks with crystals, wire and some needle-nosed pliers, then sits at the other end of the long dining room table with stencils, glue and rhinestones to make the monogram.

He’s engrossed in his work until he reaches for his glue bottle only to find it missing. When he looks up, Nik is sitting on the edge of the table, cradling the bottle in his hands and looking back at him.

“You still know how to make everything?” Nik asks in a low voice, and Aaron recognizes that quirk in his brow—Nik actually picked it up from him sometime in their last year of high school. Stephanie said it was a sign that they were simpatico, Jasmine found it vaguely creepy and Aaron thought it was adorable. He still does.

“You know what my mom says about idle hands. Besides, it’s like Alex designed this wedding pretty much for me to come in and take over.” He slants a look at her, and she sticks the tip of her tongue out at him and grins.

Nik is smiling. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she did. She thinks the world of you, you know. She talks about you all the time. “

“Lies, these are all terrible, slanderous lies. Cool it, Warren,” Alex sing-songs from the other side of the table.

Aaron snorts. “We’re all lucky that my mother believes in doing things herself. And that she believes practical isn’t good enough; everything also has to be
pretty
. I have been well trained.”

“Well, she’s really good at making very pretty things,” Nik says.

Aaron stares at him as an incredulous smile grows on his face.
Jesus Christ,
is he laying it on thick. It’s reminiscent of what Nik was like a thousand years ago, when a “romantic” night out meant going to dinner and a movie at the mall but also getting to hear things like this. Nik has
always
been like this, relentlessly and unflinchingly romantic, without a single embarrassed bone in his body, and if Aaron had thought the part of him that could appreciate that was dead… well, he’s wrong all the time, so that’s hardly news.

The moment is broken when Alex starts to giggle and Jas­mine says. “Oh my God,
Nik
. Get it together, son. Did you actually forget we were
in the room
?”

Nik closes his eyes and makes a face. “Yeah. Thanks for remind­ing me so graciously, though.” He steps around Aaron, puts his hands on his shoulders and bends down to kiss Aaron’s hair. “Anything else you want to say, while we’re already com­pletely embarrassed?”

Jasmine gives him her very best bitch look and holds eye contact for a long few seconds before she smiles. “I think I need to talk to Aaron first, but I said everything I needed to say to you about Aaron years ago, Nik. Don’t tell me you don’t remember.”

“Understood.”

She looks at him for a few beats longer, then turns her bitch face to Aaron. “This time I’m saying it to you too, though—don’t fuck it up again.”

“Message received, princess, but let me ask: Are you looking forward to seeing Joe this weekend?”

The expression on her face is priceless, but just then Tu sweeps into the dining room with his camera, eager to get a few snaps of wedding preparations, and Aaron files the tiny revelation of that moment away as something to be revisited.

That night at dinner, Nik slides into the seat next to him and pours him a glass of wine. Conversation is animated, excited, and when it’s his turn to check in, Aaron tells the group about the shopping trip and shows off the completed cake-toppers. Nik rests his hand on Aaron’s shoulder as he leans over to take a closer look at the curl of the letters, and Aaron catches Stephanie’s eye across the table. She’s smirking into her glass of wine, and he only cocks his head and shrugs; and then she smiles, radiant and happy. When he stands to clear the table, Jasmine grabs his hand as he reaches for her plate, and when she slides their fingers together to tickle his fingertips, he grins at the old, familiar handshake and winks at her.

After dinner, Aaron slips into the kitchen to bake the cakes, eager to get them in the refrigerator before bed so he can do most of the work tomorrow. He brings the timer to the living room and perches on the edge of the sofa closest to the kitchen with Nik sitting on the floor and leaning back against his legs. Between his runs to the kitchen, they get their asses handed to them in Trivial Pursuit; their pairing is strong in the cultural categories but utterly hopeless in Science & Nature, and Aaron’s kitchen chemistry and Nik’s jokes about that
other
kind of chemistry don’t do much to help their cause. Later, though, Nik helps Aaron wrap the cakes and place them in the refrigerator, and then drops out of the game so he can drag Aaron to bed early—it’s all Aaron can do not to stick out his tongue at David’s raised eyebrows as they go— and quietly make bad jokes about friction and conservation of energy as they rock against each other slowly and insistently and so, so carefully.

Nik falls asleep in the middle of a kiss, and Aaron laughs at the symbolism and then lies awake and thinks of what he remembers from his physics class in college about inertia and momentum, potential energy and bodies in motion, until he drifts off with his front plastered to Nik’s back.

In Their Own Words

A
n email dated
February 14, 2011:

I can’t sleep. Mom was so tired she fell asleep in front of the news again, and I finished my homework in a panic by seven because I was SURE your mom was going to call here and I wanted it done before we got into it. So there is really nothing to do right now except freak out. You should be sleeping or I would text you, but knowing your dad he took your phone, and the last thing I want to do right now is make anybody in your house angrier at me. Or you.

I am SO SORRY, Nik. I know it’s not anything I did, really, but I feel guilty, like I got you into trouble you were trying so hard to avoid. I swear I didn’t hear anything either—for what it’s worth, when I left, I did notice that your dad hadn’t pulled into the garage, so that’s why we didn’t hear the door going up. I hope it wasn’t too bad when I left, and I hope your mom didn’t cry. I know you hate that.

Also: okay, so I know what we had just finished doing, but I don’t know what HE knows. We were dressed, everything was covered. Does he know?

One last thing: Until he came home, until he opened your door, until your eyes got wider than I have ever seen them, this was the best, sweetest afternoon of my life. I’m sorry you’re sick, and I’m sorry that it ended like it did, but I liked making special grilled cheese for you and I liked feeling like I had a place to be after school, that I was needed. I liked pretending that I was coming home to you, and I like what it means about what New York can be. I’m sorry your dad was there, but I’m not sorry that I was, or that you were. I’m not sorry for all the ways I can find to take care of you, and all I can really think about right now are other ways to make you feel better and better. Only some of them require you to have a fever. None of them require it to be Valentine’s Day.

Okay. I’m going to send this now. Let me know how it’s going over there as soon as you can. I can’t stand this. Happy Valentine’s Day, Nik.

Thursday

A
aron slips out
of bed early with one last kiss to Nik’s shoulder and, after a quick shower, he grabs his phone and sneaks out to the front porch. The morning is sticky, over­cast and still, and even the Gulf seems lazy as uninspired waves collapse slowly over the gray of the sand. He woke up with someone on his mind, and he needs to make a call.

It’s just after seven, so he calls the work number. He paces while the phone rings, anxious when it rings more than three times and then he’s more tightly-wound when he hears, “Brenda’s Baby and Kid Care, this is Karen, how may I help you?”

“Aunt Karen, it’s Aaron.”

“Aaron! Oh, there you are, it’s showing up now—we got a new phone system for this side of the house and it is
so
laggy on the caller ID, I’m sorry. How you doin’, honey?”

“I’m good. Everything’s going fine here.”

“Alex isn’t working you too hard, is she?”

“Oh, you know. It’s Alex. She’s freaking out, obviously, but it’s not like I’m not used to her when she’s in an absolute panic.”

“Are you having fun, at least?”

He kicks the side of the house and pictures his aunt, stand­ing there with a baby on her hip. “You know I am. How are things there?”

“
Busy
. The teachers go back to work next week, so we’ve got a lot of theirs here so they can have a few days to themselves before it all gets started again, and there’s a whole crop of little bitty ones, and you know what they’re like.”

Does he ever. “Totally unreasonable, but absolutely adorable. I bet she’s in love with all of them and can’t stop bitching about it.”

“You got it, honey, and between us, I’m sure the money’s nice.”

He smiles; it’s nice to know that this is in no way about him and how much he costs, because there was a time when he wasn’t so sure. “No doubt. Is she busy, then?”

“I think she’s probably not too busy to talk to you. Did you need to…”

“Yeah, Aunt Karen, please, if you don’t mind.” He winces.

“It’s not a problem, honey—you never are. We’ll see you Sunday?”

“Um… yeah, I think so. I’ll let you know as it gets closer. Is that okay?”

“Perfectly fine. Hang on a second, and if I disconnect you, just call back, okay?”

The line goes dead before he can respond, and after almost two minutes of silence his mom picks up with a fumble and a thud.

“Aaron?”

There’s tinkly music in the background, and he can picture his mom, surrounded by cribs and toys and sticky hands, standing in the addition she paid for in barter and years of savings. She’s been watching kids since he was little, but once his dad was gone for good she’d become serious about making a living at it, and the business she’s built is the culmination of over a decade of careful planning and smart decisions. Their lives are completely different, but he is so damn proud of her, and suddenly he misses her desperately even though it’s only been a few days. He leans against the wall of the house and slides down until he’s seated.

“Yeah, Mom. Hi.”

“How you doing? Getting ready to get Alex all married up?”

“I think so. She’s… do you remember how excited she was when we got tickets to see Janet Jackson at the rodeo our senior year? Give her five years to grow up a little bit, then multiply by one thousand. She’s
that
.”

Brenda chuckles. “That must be a picture; she always was so pretty when she was excited—her face gets all full of life and it’s like she’s a whole new girl. Give her a big hug for me, will you, and tell her I’m so sorry to miss her big day. It’s such a busy time, honey, and I’m pretty sure I’ll just want to rest this weekend. Josh’ll be bringing a gift, though, and it looks like Megan is going to have to work, so it’ll be just him and Joe.”

“I’ll tell her.” He’s quiet for a few seconds, and then he says, “Mom, do you… I mean, I know you’ve got work and all, but can you talk for a minute?”

He can hear her office chair creak as she sits down, and it wrings the knot in his belly a little tighter to know what he must sound like if she had already headed for the office.

“Any time, Aaron,
any
time, you know that. Just hang on a second.” Her voice is muffled by the hand he knows she’s pressed over the phone as she calls out to one of the girls she sometimes hires. It’s morning, so they’re maneuvering around drop-off and breakfast; this is a rhythm he knows in his bones after helping out himself during so many school holidays. He leans against the side of the house and lets his head thump against the concrete siding and his eyes slide closed while he listens to her muffled vowels and the misshapen pitch contour of her voice. He thinks about her hand over the mouthpiece—her hands are where her age is showing up first, but they’re still so
strong
.

“Okay,” she finally says, and he’s startled by the clarity of her voice. “Tell me what’s going on.”

It seems as if he has no time to waste, so he launches directly into it. “It’s Nik.”

“I figured. Is Ollie there?”

He laughs, just a little, and tears up at the same time. “No. No, not at all. They broke up.” He pauses, and then dives in. “He’s moving to New York in the fall. For grad school. And… also for me. He’s coming to New York.”

She’s silent, the only sound the faint drone of NPR she always has running on the clock radio perched on top of her desk shelf; she says she keeps it on to remind her that there are adults somewhere out in the world, because some­times she can forget by lunchtime. Then, all at once, Aaron hears a quick intake of breath and the rustle of fab­ric and creak of ancient springs as his mom leans back in her chair.

“Oh,
Aaron
. Oh my
God
.”

“I
know.
I know, okay.” Her hush has settled over him, too. “It’s… we… he’s still in love with me.”

“Did he
say
that? In those words?”

“He did. And he is, Mom. I’m absolutely sure of it.”

“Tell me the whole thing.”

He smiles, then, because of course that’s what she wants, so he does—sort of. He tells her an edited version, a sanitized story about how Nik chased him and about how incredibly easy he was to catch.

There’s another pause on the phone, and then she asks, laughter in her voice, “So exactly how back together are you?”

“Mom.”

“Oh come on, honey. I’m trying to figure out how I can help. All I mean is, how much of a done deal is this?”

Aaron takes a chance, screws up his face and says, “I left him in my bed to make this phone call.”

Brenda gasps. “Aaron Joseph Wilkinson!”

“I’m sorry, but you asked! And it’s true, and I’m not gonna act like it isn’t once we’re back there, so you might as well know.”

“Oh,
Aaron
. That doesn’t… honey, I
hate
saying this to you. But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. You know that, right?”

“Mother. Believe me, I
know
. But this time it does. I really think it does.”

“So you’re saying you both jumped into it feet first, without really thinking about it.”

He thinks about that and tries to figure out how to say what’s been lurking in the back of his mind. “Actually, I don’t think so. It feels more like we’ve picked up exactly where we would have been if we had never broken up.”

“But you
did,
honey, is my point. You broke up a long time ago, and it was hard and messy and awful. Did he ever explain exactly why?”

“His dad, basically. His dad’s worst side, and then money stuff.”

His mom is silent while, he’s sure, she works through the men­tal puzzle, slotting the players together in the right con­figurations, and then she sighs. “Well, that sounds just about right. His mom was such a nice lady, but his dad could be a
real
hard-ass. Poor kid. And he didn’t tell you any of this then?”

He winces. “Yeah, I think a lot of that might be on me.” His mother snorts. “I know. I was
such
a jackass, and I don’t think I was in any position to listen. And he was completely freaked out, and didn’t know how to tell me without shouting it in my face, which I don’t think he could have done. It was just too much, and we blew it.”

His mother’s voice is soft and sympathetic. “You were both so damn
young,
honey
.”

“We were. We aren’t any more.”

“You’re younger than you think you are.”

“But not as young as
you
think I am.”

Brenda chuckles. “Now
that
is probably true.” She pauses, and then she finally asks the right question. “So why’re you calling me?”

“Mmm, that’s a good question. I’m not exactly sure.” He pleats the hem of his shorts, lets it go and then does it all over again. “I think because… it feels important? To my life, I mean. It feels like a big deal. And you should know about those things. I
need
you to know about those things.”

He can tell she is choking up when she finally speaks. “Okay. Baby, I’m so proud of you. Thank you.”

“Mom,” he says, his voice level.

She sniffs, just once, before she comes back with her voice a little more in control. “I know. Okay. Okay.” She blows out a long breath and then says, one more time, “Okay. But—let me ask you something else. Why haven’t I gotten this phone call before? You’re a good-looking kid and I’m sure you’ve been dating, and I haven’t heard one single, solitary word about a boy since Nik.”

He takes a second to feel surprised that he never told his mother about Michael. Now that he thinks about it, nobody back home knows about
anybody
at school; his mom has visited enough times to meet his roommates and put faces to names, but that’s about it. “I guess that’s because he’s the one that really matters.” How easily he says it; it’s so stark and simple it makes him smile and want to beat his head against the wall, and his eyes fill with tears again.

“My
goodness
, Aaron. Okay, so there you go. You really happy?”

“I’m… I think I am, underneath being absolutely fucking
terrified.
Sorry, language, I’m sorry.”

She chuckles, low and easily, and says, “No, yeah, that sounds about right. I think it is terrifying. But one more thing: You said he was in love with you. You feel the same way?”

He’s quiet, because saying this out loud is a new thing, and he doesn’t know how to say it without sounding pathetic and he hates himself a little for that. “For a very long time, and… without any real interruption.”

“Oh. So there you go,” his mom says, this time in a soft whisper, like she used to use the few times he remembers going to church with her. She blows out a big breath and laughs her way through the tail end of it, and when she speaks again her voice is back to normal. “Well. It’s like I’ve always said: You are
stubborn
like a damn mule
.
I should have known it would always end up back here.”

“You could have told me!” he says, wiping away tears.

“Like you woulda listened if I had said so then.”

“Yeah. Mama, I—thank you.”

“Like I said, baby boy, any time. Is he coming back this way with you after the wedding?”

“I think so. He’s spending the summer at home, so he’ll be around when I am.”

“Get him over here. I want to see him.”

He rolls his eyes, seventeen all over again. “Mama, tell me you’re not going all protective again.”

“I think I’ve earned it—he wasn’t the only one you were an ass to that last semester of high school—but no. He was always such a good boy, real respectful, and I’d like to see how he turned out. And he can remind me why I don’t drive over and tear a strip off of his old man —shoulda done that a long time ago.”

Aaron grins. “We should put together a posse.”

“And, you know… your aunt Karen will want to see you two together. She always thought he was a handsome boy. It’ll help her feel a lot better about this whole thing.”

“Karen, huh?”

“Honey, you know exactly how nosy my sister is.”

“Uh huh
.
It’s fine—I’m sure he’ll want to see you, too. I’ll call you with the schedule once we figure it out.”

He can hear the grin in her voice. “That sounds great, baby.” After a pause she says, “When we get off the phone you’re going back to bed, aren’t you?”

He grins back. “It’s a distinct possibility, yes.”

“So, look, Aaron, honey, I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a long time about, uh, about your new graduate program! Tell me more about that, why don’t you.”

He laughs down the phone, “I love you, Mama.”

“Love you too, Aaron. Tell Nik I said hello.”

“I will. I’ll talk to you soon.”

And just as he’s getting ready to hang up, his mom says, “Hey, Aaron? I’m so happy for you both, baby.”

“Thank you.”

After he hangs up, he sits on the porch for a few minutes longer and then slips into the house, creeps up the stairs and lies, fully clothed, on his bed, watching Nik sleep. Eventually Nik stirs, his eyes twitch and his head turns toward Aaron before he fully wakes. His eyes are still sleepy and content when he cracks them open and says, sleep clouding his voice, “’Morning.”