"Oh, hey, guess what?" he said. "I already heard back from the guy who wrote to me."
"Really? What did he say?"
"He couldn't believe I wrote him. Which always seems so strange to me. Are there really people who wouldn't respond to an email like that?"
"I know, it's crazy."
Neither of us said anything for a second.
"Otto?" I said.
"Yeah?"
But once again, I couldn't find the right words, so I hugged him instead, hard and long. Not being a hugger, I guess I didn't understand that sometimes this was a way to say things you couldn't quite put into words.
* * *
"Congratulations!" Vernie said to me, out on the deck. "That was exactly as wonderful as I knew it would be."
"Thanks," I said. I nodded at Walker, inside getting food. "And what's the story there?"
"I met him out walking this morning. And..."
"What?"
"Well, I decided you were right. My life doesn't have to end just because I'm sixty-eight years old."
"Vernie, you're seventy-four."
She laughed. "Yeah, but he doesn't know that!" She leaned in close. "You also might have been right about the other thing. We've got a date tonight."
"What—?" Then I realized she was talking about getting laid, and I blushed. "That's fantastic, Vernie. I'm so happy for you."
"Oh, please, it's the oldest story in the book. The mentor thinks she has all the answers, but it turns out she learns something from her protégé? How many times have we seen that story? What a cliché!"
"Speaking of screenplay ideas," I said, "I think I know what I'm going to write next."
"Do tell."
"Well, I'm going to write about this weekend. About two guys getting married, and how they invite all their closest friends to spend the days before with them, getting everything ready."
"Really?"
"Yeah, but halfway through the weekend, aliens invade."
"Are you serious?"
"Totally! I mean, has there ever been a gay, alien-invasion movie?"
Vernie smiled. "But I thought the whole point was to write a low-budget script. Aliens mean special effects, which are expensive."
"Yup! I changed my mind. I decided to write the movie I wanted to write, to hell with the cost."
Vernie smiled. "Go big or go home?"
"Exactly! I'm writing movies, right? So let's write some movies."
"But with subversive gay undertones."
"Well, I mean, it is me," I said. "Anyway, it sounds like we both figured a few things out these last few days."
"Oh, please! Life isn't like in the movies. People don't solve all of their problems over the course of a single weekend."
"Of course not!" I said, and we both stood there grinning like the fools we were.
* * *
Later, I found Min. "You were absolutely terrific," I said.
"Thanks," she said. "It was truly an honor."
At that, both our eyes fell on Ruby, over in the kitchen serving cake.
"She's really great," I said.
"She is, isn't she? For the first time in a long time, I can actually see myself getting married one day. Maybe not any time soon, but someday. Can you believe it? Me, the person who is so terrible at relationships?"
"I can believe it. Oh, hey, I didn't tell you. I figured out what happened to the people of Amazing."
"Oh?" she said. "This should be good."
I told her my theory, and she thought about it.
"So Amazing isn't a place, it's a state of mind?"
"Exactly."
She thought for a second, then nodded. "I like it!"
We both stood there, looking out at the crowd.
"Min?" I said. "Thanks for everything."
"Anytime."
I turned to her. "No. I mean everything."
"Anytime," she said again, but this time it meant something altogether different.
I still wasn't a hugger, but in Min's case, I decided to make another exception.
* * *
Later still, Gunnar came to me and handed me an envelope.
"What's this?" I asked.
"Open it," he said.
So I did. It was a check for twenty thousand dollars.
"What in the—?"
"It's my wedding gift to you guys."
"Gunnar! You already gave us a wedding gift! Remember? You said you were going to make sure nothing got in the way of our wedding. And you did! You were absolutely great. I have no idea how you did the things you did, but you did them anyway."
"Craig's List."
"What?"
"That's how I got rid of the orca. Plus, a little basic physics. I hired someone with a big boat. That's also how I found the boats to bring everybody here for the wedding. Hey, it's the sharing economy, right? But I figured out how to operate the generator on my own."
"Gunnar!" I said, but at least I was smiling when I said this.
"What?" he said with his usual cluelessness.
"The point is," I said, "you already did all those things. That was your wedding gift to us, and it was the best gift anyone could have possibly given. You don't need to give us twenty thousand dollars!"
He shrugged. "I'm selling my houseboat. Do you have any idea how insane the Seattle real estate market has been these last few years? I'm going to make seven hundred thousand dollars. Oh, hey, I also signed on with the crew of this research vessel for six months. We're going to be studying penguins in Tierra del Fuego. Word is we'll be heading to Antarctica too."
"Really? That's fantastic! But wait, go back. I don't care if you sold your houseboat. We still can't take twenty thousand dollars of your money."
"Sure, you can. Didn't you tell me you couldn't afford a honeymoon? That you were disappointed about what a lame start that was for your marriage?"
I had told Gunnar that, weeks ago. But that was before everything that had happened this weekend.
"Gunnar—"
"Look, Russ, you can either take it now, or I'll hack into your checking account and deposit it without you and Kevin knowing. So which is it gonna be?"
Clearly, I really did have the world's best friends.
* * *
By early evening, the ferries were running again. This time, we used Uber, and all our parents and family and friends left. Min, Gunnar, Otto, Vernie, Ruby, and Nate stayed behind to help Kevin and me clean up. After that, Min signed our wedding certificate, and Nate and Gunnar acted as our witnesses, and we all had another toast of champagne, and Kevin and I were officially married.
By then, everyone else had to leave, to get back to their real lives (and Vernie had her date). So after some tearful goodbyes, and even a few more hugs, everyone went their separate ways.
Kevin and I had our own plane trip back to Los Angeles, but not until the following afternoon, so he and I spent that last night by ourselves at the Amazing Inn.
When the last person was finally gone, he turned to me and said, "Well?"
Once again, I was at a loss for words. What could I say? It was a little like with Otto and fame: the weekend had been simultaneously far worse than I had ever imagined (with all the things that had gone wrong), and also far better (the way everything had worked out in the end).
"Yeah," Kevin said, reading my expression and nodding, "I know."
I looked around the house, which was sparkling clean but sterile and empty now, and that made me sad. When we'd rented this place, we'd been incredibly stressed out about how expensive it was, worried how we'd pay for the whole wedding. With Gunnar's check, we didn't need to panic about money anymore, at least for a little while.
"Do you feel any different?" he asked me. "Now that we're married?"
I concentrated like I was trying to feel the bones inside my body. Finally, I said, "I feel good — really, really good. Well, I'm sad that everyone is gone. But I'm happy that I'm here with you. About us, no, I don't feel any different. Not at a
ll, in fact. I feel exactly the same about you that I did before. That I have for a long, long time. I'm really glad we got married, and it did help clarify a few things in my mind. But it's funny. I think mostly what it did was acknowledge the obvious."
He laughed. "That about sums it up, doesn't it?"
Did everyone feel this way after getting married? It sort of went against the school of thought that said that getting married was a Really Big Deal, and everyone needs to take it Really, Really Seriously.
But that's the thing. I don't think it's bad acknowledging that commitment is something different from marriage. Sometimes the two things go together, but not always, because commitment is what happens on the inside, what you feel, and it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the words you say, or your signature on a piece of paper.
Anyway, it was nice to know I'd felt a really strong commitment to Kevin for a while now, because I was pretty sure it meant I'd married the right guy.
* * *
Later, as Kevin and I were getting ready to go to sleep, I said to him, "You know, I really like this bed."
"Yeah, me too," he said. "It's great."
"I'm getting tired of our futon. Thanks to Gunnar, we can afford a new bed now."
Kevin thought about it. "I'm not sure I can handle that. Getting married and buying a grown-up bed, both in the same year?"
"Is that what it would be? A grown-up bed? A sign that we've entered the next stage of our lives?"
"Wouldn't it?"
I thought about it. "No," I said at last. "I think it just means I'm tired of sleeping on a damn futon!"
We both laughed.
We flossed, and brushed our teeth, and washed and moisturized our faces — all the things we always did before going to bed at night. At one point, I realized that this was the first time we'd done those things as a married couple, but a second later, I thought, So what?
We had sex that night too — our first sex as a married couple, but I'm not sure either of us was even aware that it was our first married sex. As for the sex itself, it wasn't nearly as good as the sex in the woods that morning (not even close), but it was still pretty fun.
Kevin fell asleep right after, but I stayed awake for a bit, spooning him from behind. I gazed over at the big window with no curtains, but it looked different with the lights off, because now I could see outside: the outline of tree trunks with the stars beyond.
I remembered what I'd decided about the people of Amazing — about how they didn't like the way things were in their town, so they'd up and left. They'd gone off over the horizon, to find a better place to be. They'd learned you couldn't live in a place called Amazing, not for long anyway, because it always had a way of slipping away from you.
But as I lay there in bed, I wondered if that was true.
I thought about everything that had happened to me since I first met Kevin Land, back in middle school or high school, however you calculated it. I thought about all the people I'd encountered, the things I'd done. Some of it had been good, some of it bad, and a lot of it had been pretty damn interesting, at least to me.
I held Kevin tighter in the dark, feeling his body against mine — the hardness of his muscles, the smoothness of his skin. He was so warm, like cuddling a summer day, and he smelled so good — this perfect combination of the cocky, confident boy he'd seemed to be in high school and the gentle, sensitive man I now knew he was.
That's when I thought: maybe Amazing wasn't something over the horizon, something off in the future. Maybe it wasn't about the beauty of the struggle either, appreciating the journey to the destination.
No, maybe Amazing was all around me, a constant thing, part of every molecule of matter, present in every second of every day. But for some reason, I couldn't see it, except in glimpses, except in moments like this one, lying in bed in the dark with Kevin.
It was a nice thought, the idea that the place I was going to was the place where I already was.
I tried to cling to that thought, even as I held tightly to Kevin. But it had been a long day and I was exhausted, and before I knew it, I drifted off to sleep.
BOOKS BY BRENT HARTINGER
Russel Middlebrook: The Futon Years
(Adult Books)
* The Thing I Didn't Know I Didn't Know (Book 1)
* Barefoot in the City of Broken Dreams (Book 2)
* The Road to Amazing (Book 3)
The Russel Middlebrook Series
(Young Adult Books)
* Geography Club (Book 1)
* The Order of the Poison Oak (Book 2)
* Double Feature: Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies/
Bride of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies (Book 3)
* The Elephant of Surprise (Book 4)
Other Books
* Three Truths and a Lie
* Grand & Humble
* Shadow Walkers
* Project Sweet Life
* The Last Chance Texaco
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brent Hartinger is an author, playwright, and screenwriter. Geography Club, the book in which Russel Middlebrook first appears (as a teenager), is also a successful stage play and a feature film co-starring Scott Bakula. As a screenwriter, Brent has a number of other film projects in active development.
In 1990, Brent helped found the world's third LGBT teen support group, in his hometown of Tacoma, Washington. In 2005, he co-founded the entertainment website AfterElton.com, which was sold to MTV/Viacom in 2006. He currently co-hosts a podcast called Media Carnivores from his home in Seattle, where he lives with his husband, writer Michael Jensen. Read more by and about Brent, or contact him at brenthartinger.com.
If you enjoyed this book, please consider posting a review wherever you typically share your opinions about books. Also, sign up for the author's newsletter (and receive a free ebook), like him on Facebook, or follow him on Twitter.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks, as always, to my husband Michael Jensen, my editor Stephen Fraser, and my agent Jennifer De Chiara.
Thanks also to Philip Malaczewski for continuing to create great book jackets (this one's my favorite so far).
I had a great time co-writing a real-life version of Otto's song, "This Time and Place," with my friend Danny Oryshchyn, and another friend, Jeremy Ward, did a terrific job helping me record and sing it. Look for it online (but keep your expectations low: I'm a writer, not a singer!).
Early readers who generously contributed their time and extremely helpful opinions on this book include Matt Carrillo, Paul Chiocco, Nate Edmunds, Erik Hanberg, Michael Higgins, Wes Jamison, Brian Katcher, Bill Konigsberg, Brad Lane, Nate Leslie, Mark MacDougal, Joe Muscolo, Tim O'Leary, Peter Orem, Lucas Orosco, Robin Reardon, Tim Sandusky, Lais Santos, R.J. Seeley, Gregory Taylor, and Christopher Udal.
Copyright © 2016 Brent Hartinger
All rights reserved.
Song: "This Time and Place"
Words by Brent Hartinger,
Music by Brent Hartinger and Danny Oryshchyn
The events and characters of this book are entirely fictional.
Any similarity to events or people,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced
in any matter whatsoever without permission
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles or reviews. For information, contact:
BK Books
PO Box 30542
Seattle WA 98113
www.brenthartinger.com
Cover design by Philip Malaczewski
ISBN-13: 9781310704239
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