The Luckiest (22 page)

Sunday

W
hen Aaron wakes
the next morning, the sun is already high in the sky, and he can hear noises from outdoors and from elsewhere in the house. He wakes slowly, and Nik is there, right there, pressed against his side where they’ve shifted in their sleep.

Last night they disentangled themselves, finally, and Nik wordlessly cleaned them up and then collapsed back into him. This morning, with the sun up and the night over, he’s almost embarrassed to remember what it was like, especially the second time. He hasn’t been that close to somebody—that exposed and
intimate—
in such a long time, and he forgot how vulnerable and shaken it leaves him, how hard it is to live with when he’s become so used to keeping more distance.

But lying there with Nik, the second time and then, God… afterward
,
they just quietly watched each other. Nik settled on his back and Aaron pillowed his head on his shoulder and watched his hand move over Nik’s chest in aimless circles simply for the satisfaction of touching a different part of his skin. Nik breathed deeply and hummed his satisfaction, and Aaron laid his hand over Nik’s heart to feel it beat. It felt so calm and so… simple, really.

Aaron thought, then,
He’s real
—and it’s so silly, Aaron knows it’s silly, but this morning he still feels the same—Nik is real, he’s right here, he’s breathing right next to me and soon he’ll open his eyes and he’ll look at me and he’ll
still
be real. Years of knowing Nik, of sometimes understanding him so well and sometimes not at
all,
don’t make this seem any less likely.

Aaron lies there, warm and loose and naked, enveloped in sheets that smell like them, and he stares at the ceiling and makes himself think about going home today, having to peel himself away and go back to his mother’s house and then New York, go back to his life just as he left it, with one hell of an exception. Some things will change—he has a lot of people he’ll be cutting out, for one thing, and the fact that he doesn’t feel that as a bigger loss makes him wince and stop to breathe for a minute. But the thing is, he can
see
it.

He can see how it’s going to work, can imagine Nik there with him. Maybe it’s easier because he’s had so much practice picturing Nik in New York—so many years of it. But he also thinks about what it will be like
now,
about the difference that four years of adulthood make, about the difference between playing in the city as a new undergrad and making a real go of it as a writer and grad student. If Nik had come then, it would have been play, one grand adventure. Now it feels like the beginning of something very different, a whole new phase of his life, his adulthood, and now Nik will be with him for it. Aaron will straighten Nik’s tie, fix his hair, steal his kisses. It’s a funny thing, to shift your life to fit around somebody with so little warning, but Aaron has already done the less-fun version of this, the rewrite that suddenly strips all those little things
out,
so this… this could be easy. Happy, anyway.

Nik shifts and sighs and wraps an arm around Aaron’s waist, hums into his shoulder and says in a sleepy voice, “I’m going to miss this, waking up with you.”

Aaron turns to Nik and studies his face, his sleepy eyes and the small, unconscious smile bending his mouth. “Not for long, you won’t. You’ll be in New York in a couple of months.” His eyes trail down Nik’s jawline, and he lets his fingers follow as he says, a little unsure, “You should come out early if you can. You’ve heard all about my apartment so I realize it’s not that tempting an offer, but I
do
have my own bedroom and you’d be welcome there. If you want to.”

Nik sighs into the caress, and closes his eyes and clears his throat. “I will. Still. Even once I’m moved there, it won’t be like this every day.”

“No. It won’t.” Aaron brushes some hair away from Nik’s eyes. “We still have lives to lead, you know. Not every day is part of your best friend’s hellish wedding week.”

Nik opens his eyes, smiles at him and says, “No, we can’t be that lucky.”

“Still.” He finally meets Nik’s eyes. “We’re pretty lucky, I’d say.”

“The luckiest,” Nik whispers as he pulls Aaron into a kiss.

They kiss for long minutes, sweet and soft. Aaron still feels overwhelmed by Nik—in such a different way from last night, but just as wonderful. He slides closer and pushes one thigh between Nik’s, tangling their bodies together again and let­ting himself fall back into the closeness, overwarm and sticky and perfect.

Eventually Nik slides out of bed after a lingering kiss and returns to his room to grab another change of clothes. Aaron rolls over and pulls his tablet from the nightstand to check his email—as much as part of him wants to stay here forever, he’s already starting to get his head in the game for what comes next.

There in his personal email is a comment from CityDan, a stranger who has been sporadically commenting on Aaron’s personal blog for almost as long as he’s been posting there. Aaron has no idea who he or she is—he imagines CityDan as a wiry man in middle age, quiet and contemplative, because his advice is always very thoughtful and reasonable and
kind,
so sensitive for a person who somehow manages to read full, unfiltered Aaron and keeps coming back. Aaron has Google-searched the username before, but the hits are very thin and he doesn’t seem to be able to put together a consistent sense of a user. Over time, he’s come to think of CityDan as his fairy godfather; he’s not real, not
really,
but Aaron would still miss him if he disappeared, and he’d like to think CityDan would miss him, too.

As always, CityDan’s comment is short. And, as always, it takes his breath away.

I’m happy for you. It’s hard, sometimes, to let our­selves go with people who have hurt us. But I think that finding your way back to some­body who has
known you for a long time and can still love you is a precious thing. It’s even more precious to know some­body for a long time and to love
them—
most of us can spend a lifetime looking for somebody we feel that way about.

Good luck to you both. I’ll be pulling for you. Just remember that falling in love isn’t the point. Living in love is.

Nik comes back into the room a short while later, clothes dan­gling from his hand and a stunned grin on his face. He bounces down onto the bed and hisses, “Tu hooked up with Stephanie.”

Aaron drops his tablet on the bed and stares at him. “What are you
talking
about?”

“She was there—when I went to get my clothes, they were in bed together.”

“Hmm. Maybe she just slept there, for some reason.”

Nik’s face is mischievous, absolutely tickled. “Nope. That room came with two twin beds, and one of them was still perfectly made. And I’m pretty sure she wasn’t wearing a shirt.”

“Oh, holy shit.” Aaron laughs, rolling the other way to lie flat on his back and stare at the ceiling.

“I
know
,” Nik breathes.

“I wonder if Jasmine knows,” Aaron says, turning to look at Nik.

Nik pokes him in the side, overflowing with mirth. “Hurry, shower, go find out!”

Aaron laughs and rolls out of bed, pushing past Nik. “We have been such a bad influence on you.”

Nik grabs his hand and pulls him back, so that Aaron is standing naked between his spread knees. “I know. Isn’t it great?” Aaron kisses him on the forehead and snickers into his hair.

Aaron sneaks down to the kitchen to get the coffee started while Nik is in the shower. He pauses when he walks through the doorway; not a single surface is uncluttered, dirty dishes are
everywhere,
and the room itself seems hungover and filled with anxiety. He shifts piles of dishes, manages to unearth the coffeemaker, makes his way to the cupboard where the coffee and mugs are stored and gets out of there as soon as he can interrupt the brewing to pour two cups. He knew it would be waiting for him, but he needs a few more minutes before he can face it.

He’s almost back to his room, just a few doors away, when Stephanie slips out of Nik and Tu’s room in last night’s dress. That alone is a first for a girl who always prides herself on being put together, but the second glance is revelatory. Her makeup and hair are in disarray, she’s carrying her shoes, and the moment she sees him she balks and grabs his arm, sloshing coffee over her dress. She looks down at the stain and then up at him, and she appears seconds away from bursting into tears when she steels her face and drags him down the hall, pushes open the door to the room Alex and David had shared and drags him inside.

The door isn’t even completely closed before she says, “You can’t tell
anybody
,” as she looks around the room as if it’s filled with people waiting to attack her.

He leans against the door and smirks at her. It’s too delicious, see­ing Stephanie like this; their competition has always been intense, and it hasn’t been limited to their work. Stephanie has rich parents and a pretty face and great connections, but she has never really had the kind of firm belief in her­self that Aaron does and he has always thought that she scares far too easily. He doesn’t know why—he’s never completely under­stood it—but it keeps her vulnerable, and it’s why they need each other: She brings the resources, and he brings the auda­city to exploit them.

“Nik already walked in on you this morning and told me all about it, and I don’t know who else I’d tell. Well. Jasmine, probably. But I suspect she’s busy with Joe this morning, so.” He shrugs.

She perches on the edge of the bed and wrings her hands, and her face is
so
earnest, so serious. “I don’t do this, Aaron!”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure you do.” He slaps himself a little; Steph­­anie always has brought out the sarcasm like nobody else could.

Her look in return is vicious. “Shut up. He’s cute. And
super
smart. And you and Nik were clearly headed somewhere to screw each other’s brains out and Alex and David are so in love and Joe and Jasmine were giving each other stupid crazy eyes and I just…”

Stephanie stares off into space. Aaron watches her for a moment and then says, a little more quietly, “I’m surprised you didn’t come on to Josh. It must have felt like a flashback to high school, seeing him there, with you and Jasmine and Joe all together.”

She’s quiet for longer than he’s used to. “He’s with some­body. I couldn’t do that to him.” A long moment passes, and then she says, “Or myself.” His heart breaks for her.

“Did you two ever… ?”

Her nod is slow, her smile sweet. “Once. Well, once, all the way. There was—it got pretty intense senior year and there was a lot of… but
that,
just that one time. He was my first, obviously.”

Aaron nods—he always wondered, and it’s not the kind of thing Aaron can ask his cousin. He wonders if he’ll ever know exactly what happened to keep them apart, if it was as dumb as what had come between him and Nik. Not everybody gets the second chance.

Suddenly, she groans. “God, he’s still
here,
and everybody’s going to know at breakfast.” She face-plants into the comforter and keeps mumbling. “I don’t know how you did this. I wish I could just
die.
”

Somehow the theatrics are a comfort, so familiar even in this very strange situation.

He puts the coffee on the nightstand, sits next to her and pats her on the shoulder.

“Okay, princess, that’s enough of that. You’ll do it because you have to, and you’re the one who’s always on about appear­ances. You didn’t do anything wrong; you are
allowed
to have a one-night stand. Who knows? It might even be good for you.” She turns her head to glare at him, and he delivers the punchline. “Maybe there’s a human interest story in it.”

The worst thing about using Stephanie for a punchline is that, more often than not, he’s the one who ends up getting punched. Still, it was totally worth it.

“Just for that I’m stealing your coffee,” she says with another vicious narrowing of her eyes, and she leans over to snag the cup from the nightstand and cradles it on top of her chest, breathing deeply.

He rolls his eyes and says, “Fine. I can always get more. Now get showered—you look like a girl who took a tumble last night, and that is not Stephanie Baxter-appropriate. Clean it up and hold your head high. You’re our host for today, still—you have to see everybody off, and then you can wallow in your disgrace on your own time.”

She gives him a weak wave, and he shows her some mercy and brushes her hair back from her face. “You’re fine, honey. Did you at least have a good time?” Her smile firms up, tiny and wicked, and he raises his brows back at her. “
Interesting
. So forget about regretting it, hold your head high and carry on. But my goodness, girl—get a shower first!”

She’s still grinning when he slips out the door and heads back to the kitchen to grab another cup of coffee for Nik. Tu is there with his own cup sitting in front of him, his chin propped on one hand while he lazily scrolls through photos on his tablet with his other. Aaron looks at him for a minute, and can’t help the smirk that he knows is stealing across his face; Tu looks fresh from the shower, but otherwise calm and unruffled.