His Best Man

by Elle Keaton

  “Ugh,” Rod groaned. The wedding was going to be a nightmare.

  In college Rod had dated a couple guys and learned he mostly liked to be on the receiving end of sex, but none of them were Travis. He didn’t feel a light turn on inside himself after not seeing them for a few days like he did when Travis came back from working out at the “property” for a few days. Rod had never told anyone but Cam about his feelings for Travis, but somehow his boyfriends guessed and eventually left, because who wanted to play second fiddle to the impossible?

  “You spend more time with Travis than you do me,” Ben had complained. “If you like him so much, why don’t you date him?”

  Well.

  “Oh, look.” Rod looked over his shoulder in the direction Jonah was staring. “It’s your other boyfriend, Travis. I think I’ll be going.”

  And so on, until Rod quit dating and started only hooking up with guys for sex. Then even that got depressing. When he moved to Skagit, he’d bought a dildo and a vibrator from the cleverly named “Otto’s Erotica.” Now that he thought back on it, safe in the warm cab of his truck, he was pathetic. Twelve years of waiting for a guy to figure out Rod was the man for him? Rod had been acting the fool, and he was done.

  He was officially turning over a new leaf, starting a new life, whatever the right phrase was. Pining for Travis was over. If Rod wanted to salvage their friendship—which he did; he couldn’t imagine his life without Travis in it—he needed to get over him.

  Travis was going to marry Lisa Harris, and Rod would be his best man, like a best friend should.

  A Steller’s jay fluttered down from a cedar tree off to the right, its blue-black wings flashing in the bright sunlight. Lots of folks didn’t like the jays, but Rod did; they were funny, opportunistic little birds and usually the only ones who stood up to the native corvids. Crows could bully an eagle, but Steller’s jays gave them the finger.

  The apartment was cold after Rod being gone for a few days. There was nothing to eat in the fridge, not that he ever kept much in it anyway. It wasn’t a great apartment, but it had been what Rod could find when he’d decided to move to Skagit after fire season. The 1980s construction had never been updated… which, really, that said enough, didn’t it? There was no lobby; all the units opened to the outside with a little porch area. Rod’s was on the second floor, with two small flights of stairs to reach the front door.

  He hadn’t taken much time to furnish it; he didn’t have that much stuff. At this point he had a mattress and box spring sitting on the floor of the bedroom and a tired beige couch he’d bought off a guy moving out of the unit next to him. The local thrift store had provided a decent set of dishes and a few pots and pans. Rod didn’t really cook, so the pots and pans were mostly to make it look like he thought about cooking. Of course there was a TV for video games and movies, perched in a weird built-in entertainment center. Or at least it had come with the apartment; probably the thing was so heavy it was more trouble than it was worth to move it.

  Today, after he unlocked the door and let himself inside, the starkness of the apartment hit him hard. He dropped his overnight bag in the bedroom and made himself a cup of coffee. Since he wasn’t allowing himself to dwell on the state of his life, Rod spent the next hour unpacking the boxes he’d left sitting in the corner of the living room.

  It was like pouring vinegar on an open wound. Every time he dipped his hand in a box, out came something associated with Travis. The baseball glove from the single year Trav convinced Rod to play. The team picture from that same year, Trav smiling and blond in the back row, Rod kneeling in the front row but off to the side, next to that jerk Brent David, who tried to trap Rod in the showers and grab his ass.

  There were the sets of Star Wars and Star Trek DVDs they’d pooled their money for in college. Rod wasn’t sure how they’d ended up in his collection. The two of them had argued for years about which of the two was better. Rod was firmly in Patrick Stewart’s camp, while Travis harbored a ridiculous affection for the rebel outpost shenanigans. Rod shrugged and tossed the cases onto the entertainment center. And so it went.

  When the boxes were empty, Rod broke them down and stacked them by the front door. Then he plopped down on the couch with his laptop and clicked open a browser. It was now or never. He clicked on the icon for a dating site. There had to be someone halfway decent living in the region.

  The Monday morning after Thanksgiving, Rod was back at work. He mostly loved his job as a school bus driver, but Mondays were always Mondays. The bus jerked to a halt, Rod pressing harder on the brake than he’d intended, but he’d only just hit the gas when he spied Jasper Ransom trotting around the corner a block away.

  Technically he wasn’t supposed to wait for kids more than a few minutes, but Jasper was chronically late, and Rod worried because there didn’t seem to be an adult associated with him anywhere. A lot of the kids walked home on their own, but usually there was a parent or guardian on the first day of school at least. Jasper had always showed up alone.

  That first week or so of driving, Jasper had been the bane of Rod’s nascent career as a bus driver: not staying in his seat, yelling at the top of his lungs, running back to look out the emergency door to see and wave at whoever was driving behind them. Once Rod hit on the idea of Storyvilletime, Jasper had quieted down, and now it was often Jasper telling the other kids to calm down “cause otherwise we won’t be able to write our story.”

  The doors folded open, and a panting Jasper climbed aboard.

  “Morning, Jasper. That was pretty close, buddy.”

  “Morning, Mr. Beton.” Jasper slid into the seat behind Rod. Rod noticed he didn’t have a backpack today and was only wearing a sweatshirt and jeans despite the cold weather that had rolled into Skagit. “What are the lizards doing now?”

  It was a twenty-minute ride to the school after picking Jasper and one other kid up. Frog and his friend Toad discovered a group of bad-guy lizards lurking outside the rebel compound. They were planning on tricking the lizards into a trap, but Toad suddenly needed a nap, and all the kids knew that unless Toad got his nap, something bad would happen. The school bus rolled into its spot in the school parking lot, and the kids all grumbled about having to wait to find out what happened next. Rod grinned as he said goodbye to his riders until three thirty. They were going to go nuts when Phabian Frog and Todd Toad found the hidden stash of jalapeño peppers. Everyone knew lizards loved hot peppers.

  Rod chuckled as he pointed the school bus in the direction of the bus lot. It was nice to be back in his routine. He wondered what Travis was up to and then stopped because he couldn’t go there. Wouldn’t.

  4

  Travis was hiding out in his bedroom. It was the only place in the house he felt safe from his mother. He had the TV on, but he wasn’t paying attention; the light from the screen flickered as the actors and stunt performers ran around jumping on each other, causing weird shadows on his bedroom walls. He wished Abigail were around, but she was back in Boise gearing up for the end of her master’s degree. He flopped over onto his back to stare at the ceiling. He didn’t even feel like playing a video game. Instead, he watched the shadows flick back and forth.

  When was the last time he and Rod had gone this long without seeing each other? Travis didn’t think there’d been one. He hated that Rod had decided to move to Skagit. They’d talked briefly on the phone a few times since Thanksgiving, but Rod seemed distracted, their conversations short, with no banter or joking around. Admittedly, Travis himself had been busy helping his dad and the Walker Enterprises permanent staff with the winter wheat. They’d planted a bit late, and the coverage wasn’t what they’d been hoping for. Wind erosion was always a worry, and this year they’d already had heavy storms.

  He hadn’t gotten up the nerve to tell Rod what Abigail had said about marrying Rod instead of Lisa. It didn’t feel like something he could pass off as a joke. It felt serious, like a heart attack. It wasn’t something you just said. When Rod h
adn’t come for Christmas, instead telling Travis he had plans with some people he’d met in Skagit, Travis knew something was up. And how he was going to fix it when he was supposed to be marrying Lisa?

  He was so fucking fucked.

  Say Abigail was right and Travis was as thick as a post, completely missing that Rod… Travis couldn’t think the thought. If Rod had feelings for Travis and Travis had been a bone brain and announced that he and Lisa were getting married… then Travis had really hurt Rod. He didn’t mean to hurt Rod. If he could live his life without ever hurting Rod, that would be a good thing.

  But Travis didn’t know where to start to fix what had gone wrong, and now Rod was… not exactly ghosting him, but definitely keeping him at arm’s length. All Travis could see in his future was a train wreck of hurt. Lisa, his mom, Rod. There was a goddamned ripple effect happening that Travis really hadn’t seen coming.

  Since Thanksgiving, wedding talk had overtaken nearly every conversation in the household. His mom spoke of nothing else when they were sitting around the dining room table, or in the TV room, or getting their first cup of coffee in the morning. Travis was sick of it. He listened enough to nod when he needed to, but the details were fuzzy and he didn’t focus on them.

  He did know Lenore hadn’t been able to reserve the Grange or the gazebo. Now she was on a mission to reserve some historic barn between Waitsburg and Walla Walla. The wedding was her new hobby, and it was slowly killing him. Even Lisa seemed overwhelmed by Lenore’s intensity.

  A twinge of unworthy jealousy sparked because Lisa was going to get away from all this nonsense soon. Travis stomped it out. The only reason Lisa and her dad were planning a dream around-the-world trip was that Lisa’s mother had insisted upon it on her deathbed only a year before. In the flickering dark of his bedroom, he admitted to himself that running away from it all sounded pretty good. But he wasn’t that kind of person.

  It didn’t help that Rod was on the other side of the state. Normally he would be the one Travis would talk to about this sort of thing, and they would share a good laugh about how controlling Lenore was. And no, he wasn’t so dense that he didn’t recognize the irony there and the essence of what Abigail had said the night he announced their engagement: he was much closer to Rod than the woman he was engaged to. Or he had been.

  Travis wasn’t stupid; in fact, he’d graduated top of his class. He just wasn’t people smart. But people liked him, and that seemed to make up for a lot of shortfalls.

  The next night Lisa was over for dinner again. She and Lenore were talking about favors. Favors? Travis escorted her home afterward, walking her up the porch steps of the mother-in-law unit she lived in. After her mother had died, Lisa had moved back from the Tri-Cities to be closer to her dad. It was cold, and the scent of snow was in the air. Travis wondered, did Lisa dream of leaving Walla Walla again, of maybe having a life that wasn’t horses and wheat; hot, oppressive summers and cold, foggy winters?

  At the top of the steps, he gave her as quick a kiss goodbye as he could justify. In the past weeks he’d come up with every possible excuse not to be intimate with her, even though she made it painfully clear she wanted more. He’d faked a cold for a few days—before actually getting one, which was probably what he deserved. He knew he was being deceitful, dragging this out much longer than it should have gone, but he didn’t know what to do. He was trapped, and he’d done it to himself. It wasn’t only about Lisa. It was his mom, his dad—all the people in town who knew just one small part of him and expected his life to play out in a certain way.

  Lisa’s lips were nice and soft, but they did little for him. He had the traitorous thought that he hoped he wouldn’t have to get drunk every time they had sex. There was going to be sex happening again at some point, but his mind kept swerving past that fact, avoiding it like a massive pothole. How much guilt was he going to have to feel before he was overwhelmed with it? Travis supposed he would find out.

  “Your mom is so excited about the wedding.”

  All thoughts of sex with Lisa, positive or otherwise, fled. His mother tended to have that effect on him.

  “I’m not complaining—it’s really nice, and my dad is glad she seems to want to do everything,” she hastened to explain, reaching out to hold his hand. It took everything Travis had in him to let her take it.

  Travis pulled a face. “Yeah, I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed. It’s been what, a month? And all she talks about is the wedding.” The night before, he’d excused himself from the table and his mom had actually followed him down the hallway to the bathroom still talking about flowers and “tool” and what kind of food she wanted. He’d had to go look up tool and weddings on the internet. It took him a few minutes to figure out the right spelling. Why would he care about tulle?

  “Lisa—”

  “Travis—”

  They both laughed nervously, the sound echoing across the front porch.

  “You go first,” Travis said. He needed to find a way to tell her that he had no idea what he was doing, that he needed to call it off for now. Probably forever.

  Lisa looked him in the eyes, making Travis feel squirmy.

  “I’m off the pill.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m off birth control. By the time dad and I get back from our trip, my body will be ready for babies.”

  Apparently you could know someone for years and really not know them at all.

  “Babies?” Travis squeaked out.

  “Our kids will be so beautiful. I can hardly wait to get pregnant.”

  Fucking hell.

  “Lisa. I thought this was to make our parents happy, to get them off our backs about marriage. I’m not ready for kids, I don’t know if I even want kids. Lisa, I can’t marry you.” The words just popped out. It wasn’t as if Travis hadn’t been thinking them almost every minute of every day, but now they’d escaped from his mouth. The look on Lisa’s face would have been priceless if anything about the situation were funny.

  She dropped his hand and gaped at him, her mouth hanging open as she processed what Travis had just said. Travis stuck his hands in his coat pockets, waiting for a blow of some kind. He certainly deserved it.

  “You what?” Her voice rose.

  “I can’t marry you.” He’d said it once; he’d keep saying it until she understood.

  “I’m leaving on our trip in a week, and now you tell me?” Lisa’s voice rose until by the end of the sentence she was screaming. The porch light next door—her dad’s house—flicked on.

  “I’m sorry.” He was sorry; he was sorry this had ever happened and sorrier now that he couldn’t go through with it. But he couldn’t. “Maybe it’s good you’re going away. By the time you get back, this whole thing will have blown over.”

  “You mean by the time I get back you will have told the whole town about me, made this my fault.” Tears were streaming down her face, and Travis didn’t know what to do.

  “Why would I do that? This is about me, not you.”

  “That’s what they all say, then they turn around and find another girl. I hate you, Travis. Get out of my face. I never want to see you again.”

  She shoved him hard. He wasn’t expecting it and stumbled down the two steps to the yard below.

  “Get away from me, you pig.”

  She fumbled in her coat pocket until she pulled out a little canister and pointed it at him. Travis had thought she was looking for her house keys. He slipped on the frosty front lawn as he ran toward his house, the frozen grass crunching under his shoes. He heard the hiss of what was probably pepper spray from behind him, but he wasn’t stopping to make sure. He wobbled and nearly slipped again, scrambling around the corner before he righted himself and kept moving quickly down the sidewalk, Lisa’s final “You fucking asshole!” burning his ears.

  File under: things that did not go as planned. He supposed it might have gone better if he had, in fact, planned what he was going to say instead of just letting it fall from his
lips. At least she was going to be gone for over a month, traveling with her dad.

  Even with the specter of his mother’s disappointment looming, when Travis unlocked the front door and slipped inside, he felt for the first time in weeks that maybe there was some kind of hope. If he only he could get ahold of Rod.

  In the days that followed, Travis was kept busy with farm business and didn’t see the harm in waiting to tell his mother the wedding was off. She was going to be mad no matter when he told her. He fully expected that Lisa would call his mom before she left, but the phone had stayed quiet, and as far as he knew, Lisa and Lenore didn’t exchange emails.

  Travis felt like a jackass for letting Lisa down—for getting the two of them into the situation in the first place and for the way he’d ended it. He’d hurt someone—not with intent, but he’d still hurt her. That stuff about babies freaked him out, though. Where had that come from? He gave her a few days to calm down before he tried to apologize again. It seemed wrong to let her leave without talking with her again, being honest.

  The night before Lisa and her dad were due to leave, Travis tapped on Lisa’s front door and waited for her to answer, shifting his weight back and forth from one foot to the other. He knew she was home; her car was parked in the driveway. There was a shuffle and a click, then Lisa opened the door a crack. From what he could see of her, she looked tired but not distraught.

  “What do you want?” Not distraught; still angry.

  “Can I come in for a minute? I, um, I’d like to talk to you.”

  She stood there for a second, obviously debating the question. Finally she opened the door wide enough for him to slip inside. She led him into the living room but didn’t offer him a place to sit, instead standing with her arms wrapped protectively around herself.