by Cari Z
“Got what?”
Tyler whirled around. “Hey! Hi! You wanna sit? I’ll get you a beer.” He looked flustered—why, Aaron wasn’t sure, but it didn’t bode well. He set Clue down and sat, but waved the beer away.
“You sure?” Tyler tilted the bottle temptingly. “You might decide you want it after I tell you that I’ve figured out what you can do for your vacation.”
“You want me to do something that’s going to drive me to drink?” Aaron smiled reluctantly. “Sounds great.”
“It is, actually. It’s great. I mean, it could be.” Tyler rubbed a hand across the back of his neck sheepishly, then thrust the piece of paper at Aaron. “Remember this?”
“What is it?” A closer look answered that question, though, and filled Aaron with the sort of painful, conflicted emotions he’d been trying to bury for years without any success. Just looking at the card in his hands made his heart hurt. “Oh. Yeah.”
“Yeah.” Tyler nodded cautiously. “Your brother’s wedding is this next weekend. They sent the invite here ’cause it’s the last place they had an address for you, which you said you were gonna fix when you got the invite for Zach’s high school graduation, like, six years ago now.” Tyler was rushing things now, hurrying to get his words out before Aaron could shut him up. “And I told you about it and you said it didn’t matter ’cause you didn’t have the time off, but I kept it just in case, y’know?”
“Yeah.” Shit, he had to get beyond one-word responses. “I remember. I just… I mean, I bought him something on his registry. That’s the last I thought of it.” Lie. Aaron had lain awake more than once since finding out his little brother, the brother he’d been separated from when they went into the system fifteen years ago, was getting married. How could Zach be old enough for marriage? He’d still been a kid the last time Aaron had seen him, happy with his new family, adopted just like Aaron had known he would be, had feared he would be.
Being Facebook friends and sending the occasional card didn’t make them family again, but Aaron had been… touched by the invitation. Touched, and also guiltily relieved that he had an excuse not to go to the wedding. Seeing Zach again would be stunning, like a punch to the diaphragm, and he just wasn’t sure he could tolerate that level of masochism in himself.
It looked like Tyler wasn’t going to let him quietly ignore it, though.
“You could go now. I’m sure he’d love to have you there.”
“It’s too late,” Aaron immediately tried. “I was supposed to RSVP a month ago, not a week before the ceremony. They wouldn’t even get the card.”
“There’s an online option,” Tyler pointed out. “For last-minute little shits like you.”
“Fuck off, man.”
Tyler snorted, and for a moment it almost felt normal. Then Aaron looked down at the card again. It was so… damn, it was just so prissy. The card was pink and green, with gold embossing and the sort of formal, fancy language that people only ever trotted out for weddings and graduations. Mr. and Mrs. Carl Simpson and Ms. Christine Ellis invite you to celebrate the union of their children, Rebecca Marie Simpson and Zachary Lyle Ellis. Not Zachary Lyle McCoy, the way he’d been born, but Aaron kept their bastard of a father’s last name while Zach was busy dropping everything else to become an Ellis.
It wasn’t fair to be mad at Zach. He’d been six when they’d gone into the foster care system, while Aaron had been thirteen. Zach had been young and cute and well-behaved for his foster parents, while Aaron had…. Anyway, it had all ended with Zach being adopted by Chrissy, slotting into place as the third of her sons like he’d always been there.
I wish I could take you too, she’d said, all well-meaning smiles stained with cigarette smoke, but Aaron had already known she’d never adopt him. He’d been too tough, too disobedient, too bad. Hell, he’d hated baseball too, and that was a cardinal sin as far as Chrissy’s other sons were concerned.
All he’d wanted was for them to last until their mother came and took them back, and then it would go back to normal. He’d take care of both of them, as long as Lia was sober enough to cash in her welfare checks, and they’d be a family. The day Chrissy had announced she was adopting Zach, though, had been the day Aaron had known their mother wouldn’t ever be taking them back. There had been no reason to try after that.
“Hey.” The touch on his elbow made Aaron jump. He looked up into Tyler’s eyes, even kinder than usual, and decided to be honest.
“I don’t know if this is a good idea.”
“You’ll never know if you don’t try,” Tyler encouraged. “Go to the e-vite, click accept, then see how you feel. It might come back and tell ya that they’re all booked up, and then you’ll know for sure.”
“Right.” That was kind of encouraging, actually. “They’ve probably had their tables arranged for months. There won’t even be room for me.” Aaron pulled out his phone and typed in the address anyway, feeling a little nervous.
“You and a plus-one.”
“What?” Online invitation, where, where, there—apply code. Oh, naturally. Aaron checked the card for his “personal wedding code.”
“You get to bring a date, see?” Tyler pointed at the bottom line: We look forward to seeing you and your guest.
Aaron chuckled. “At least that part’s easy to get out of.”
Tyler frowned. “Why would you want to get out of it?”
“Ty. Seriously. Who could I possible bring to the wedding of my estranged brother in scenic Leavenworth, Kansas, home to more prisons than any other town in the US?” He shook his head. “Even Len would have balked at that.” He put in the code and waited for a response. And waited… and waited…. “Goddamn it, just tell me no already,” Aaron muttered.
Thank you! We look forward to seeing you on Saturday!
“Fuck.”
“It said yeah, huh?” Tyler sounded smug.
“It’s just an automated message. It doesn’t mean anything,” Aaron protested.
“Well, now you’ve gotta go.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You RSVPed. That’s like a sacred vow. You can’t back out after that.” He looked over Aaron’s shoulder at the phone. “Do you get a meal choice? If there’s steak, you should get the steak. Wedding chicken always sucks.”
“How would you even know that?”
“Are you kidding?” Tyler scoffed. “Shit, I’ve been to, like, three weddings this past year. Everybody offers some kind of chicken, and it always blows. At least if it’s fish you can tell if it’s gonna suck because it’ll look like crap, but chicken gets disguised by sauces. Don’t do it.”
How did Aaron not know any of this? “Who do you know who got married?”
Tyler shrugged. “Some people from college, and Mrs. Ratched’s granddaughter got married over Christmas and she needed someone to drive her from the old folk’s home to the ceremony and back.”
“You still talk to her?” Mrs. Ratched had been their neighbor for a few years when Aaron had first moved in, but she’d gone into an assisted living facility almost a decade ago.
“Of course. She wants all the gossip about the people who bought her place, and I get cookies out of it.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Her cookies are the best, hand to God. Don’t tell Mama—she’d kill me if she knew.”
Aaron’s phone chimed with an incoming email. “Hang on.” Maybe it was Pam, telling him ha, she’d really just been joking, and he should come back to work immediately. Maybe someone needed something that only he could provide.
No, it was from… “Oh.”
“What?”
“It’s from Zach.”
“Yeah?” Tyler seemed excited. “What’s he say?”
“I haven’t opened it yet.”
“Why not?”
Because maybe he just found out it was me who RSVPed and he’s telling me not to come after all. Even though Aaron was pretty sure he didn’t actually want to attend the wedding, he still didn’t want to see his bro
ther’s refusal spelled out in plain, unblinking letters.
Still, it wouldn’t get any better if he just sat there thinking about it. Aaron took a deep breath. “Hold your horses,” he said lightly, then opened his mail. The one from Zach sat at the very top of the list with no subject. Great, that was a good sign. He opened it.
Aaron, hey! I didn’t think you were able to come, but I’m so glad you can after all! Becky’s excited to meet you, and I know Mom will be happy to see you again. We’re living with her in the family house until after the wedding, but there’s plenty of room here so you should stay too. Who are you bringing with you? When will you get here? I can’t wait to see you again. Call me when you get close. At the very bottom of it was a phone number.
Aaron swallowed dryly. He did it again. “Huh.”
“Is that a good huh or a bad huh?”
“Good,” Aaron said blankly. “I think. He says he’s happy I’m coming.”
“Of course he is. He’s your brother.” Tyler sounded a little smug. “What else?”
“He wants me to stay in the house with him and Chrissy while I’m there.”
“A little weird, but nice, I guess. What else?”
“He wants to know who I’m bringing with me.”
“Well, duh.” Tyler spread his arms wide. “You’re bringin’ me, of course.”
Aaron almost dropped the phone. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re bringin’ me. I’m the perfect plus-one for this. Hear me out.” Tyler held up a hand and raised a finger. “One, I can bring my work with me so there’s no need to worry about inconveniencing me or some crap like that. Plus I’ve got some time off coming to me, so I’m not hurting for freedom. Two, I’ve never been to Kansas before so it’ll be like a real vacation, even if the most scenic thing we pass is a gigantic fuckin’ corncob statue on the side of the road.”
“Where did you even get that idea?” Aaron marveled.
“Don’t knock my love for awful monuments. They give road trips flavor. And three, road trip! You and me!” Tyler was bouncing on his toes with excitement. “What’s not to love?”
“It wouldn’t be much of a road trip. Kansas is just a few states away.”
“That just means we have to get the most from it. Lots of stops. Stupid sightseeing. Crazy restaurants. Singin’ along with the radio. Y’know.” He shrugged. “The good stuff.”
“You really want to go on a road trip with me?”
Tyler rolled his eyes. “You need me to tattoo it on my forehead?”
“To my brother’s wedding? To the house of the woman who decided she didn’t want to take me but who had no problem taking my little brother?” A little of the bounce went out of Tyler’s frame, and Aaron felt guilty, but he needed to get this out. “This visit, trip, whatever… it’s not going to be a really fun one for me. I haven’t seen Zach in over a decade for a lot of reasons, and the last place I ever wanted to go back to was Leavenworth. I’m probably going to be pretty shitty company.”
Tyler shrugged. “I’ve seen you worse.”
“I’m not so sure of that.”
“Then I can handle you worse. I know you, man. You don’t have to pretend everything’s all right when it’s not. You also don’t have to be left to brood on everything until it makes you sick, either. Be honest.” He leveled his straightforward gaze on Aaron. “Do you really want to do this on your own? Will that make it better? Or can I come with you?”
“I’m not sure why you want to,” Aaron confessed.
“’Cause you’re my best friend. I’ll always want to be doing what you’re doing.” He laughed suddenly. “Except your fuckin’ paperwork. That shit can go jump in a dumpster fire for all I care. So c’mon, Aaron.” He batted his eyelashes—his long, dark eyelashes that made his eyes so hard to look away from—and clasped his hands in front of his chest. “Can I be your date?”
A small, rarely acknowledged nook in the back of Aaron’s mind told him that this was the sound of a door opening that he’d slammed shut a long time ago and for a very good reason. Did he really want to open it up again? He knew Tyler didn’t mean date in the traditional sense, that he was going along with this because they were friends, best friends, and he was a nice person who wanted to give Aaron a break.
It didn’t matter that occasionally, Aaron looked at Tyler and couldn’t help wondering what it would be like if they were more than friends. And that was unhealthy, left him fixated in a way that Tyler wouldn’t be able to tolerate, left him vulnerable to losing the only really good thing going in his life other than his job, and that wasn’t supportable. Aaron wasn’t going to risk Tyler’s friendship over something as simple as longing. He could beat it down. He was good at beating himself down.
Tyler’s smile was slipping away, and Aaron realized he’d let the silence go on for too long. He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Yes, fine, you can be my date.”
“Awesome!” Happiness looked better on Tyler than anything else. So what if Aaron ended up uncomfortable for a little while? He was going to be uncomfortable anyway. He might as well be in the company of his best friend than alone in a house he barely remembered with people he hardly knew how to face. At least he wasn’t going to have to do it by himself.
That would be enough. It would be more than enough. Aaron would make sure of it.
Chapter Five
THE last time Aaron had driven farther than the far end of the county had been to Memphis for a work seminar. The time before that, it had been to Nashville for the same. In fact, Aaron hadn’t even left the state of Tennessee since he’d moved there at the age of eighteen, alone and frightened but more than anything else, determined. He’d never been on a road trip, unless you counted the time that his mother’s next-to-last boyfriend before the separation had shoved them all into a car to go watch the Royals spring training in Surprise, Arizona. And ha-ha, surprise, but they never even got that far. They’d ended up spending four days in a hotel less than a hundred miles from their house where the adults got high and he and Zach spent most of their time in the hotel pool.
Tyler, on the other hand, had road-tripped in the past. He’d gone as far as Calgary once, right after his graduation from college. He’d asked Aaron to go with him then, and Aaron had declined, like Tyler must have known he would. But he’d sent pictures from Banff National Park and sunsets along the highway and yeah, a lot of kooky statues and seedy roadside motels that were just kitschy enough to appeal to Tyler’s sense of fun. Aaron hadn’t been jealous of the trip, but he’d definitely been a little wistful.
Now they were having a road trip of their own, but wistful definitely wasn’t one of the emotions happening. For starters, they’d be taking Tyler’s car, a fifteen-year-old 4Runner with a hundred thousand miles on it that would get shit mileage compared to Aaron’s Prius, but that could admittedly hold a lot more stuff. And the stuff, holy shit.
“They’re snacks.”
“It’s a damn garbage bag full of snacks. It’s like you think there aren’t any restaurants between here and Kansas,” Aaron argued. “A bag of chips, okay. A candy bar, okay. But why do we need five packages of Pringles? And a cooler full of Coke? And—” He dug out one particularly hideous bag. “—cheese straws? Seriously? You never eat shit like this at home.”
“We’re not gonna be home. We’re gonna be on the road. This is road food.”
“You’re so full of shit.”
“Hey, I could have bought chitlins, but I didn’t out of respect for your dainty sensibilities,” Tyler said. “We’re goin’ somewhere that’s not home, so we’ve got to bring a little of home along with us. And that means bad food, man. Your brother will appreciate the moon pies, I guarantee it.”
“Sure you do.” He was probably right too.
At least there was still plenty of room for their luggage, not that they needed much of it. The only things that required any particular care were the suits, which Tyler had said they should “try to match, so none of your cou
rt suits. They’re all black and that’s not a good color for a wedding.” In the end, they’d opted for shades of navy blue close enough to look deliberately alike. Tyler’s was a leftover from his sister Marin’s wedding a few years ago, one that Aaron had never seen him wear. He hadn’t known the older Howards children very well; they’d all moved out of the house by the time he’d gotten here, and Tyler had never seemed overanxious to share Aaron with them. Apart from Diana and Theo’s holiday parties, he hadn’t had much to do with them.
Aaron’s suit was something that Len had convinced him to buy just a few weeks before they broke up. “You never know when you’ll need to get a little dressy,” he’d said as he’d almost dragged Aaron into the store. “It doesn’t hurt to be ready to look good.” In retrospect, it was entirely possible that Len had been throwing Aaron a hint he was too damned obtuse to pick up on. Now he had a classic, two-button, notched-lapel suit that had been sitting in his closet in its bag that was actually going to see the light of day.
They spent the rest of Monday packing, planning, and arguing over the details, and Aaron was so absorbed by it all that it wasn’t until he climbed into the guest bed at Tyler’s house that he realized he hadn’t thought about Tommy in hours. Guilt swamped him, and he almost reached for his phone before he remembered that he’d been warned off it. Pam knew what she was doing. Whit knew what he was doing. Tommy was far from helpless. He’d be all right. He was safe. He’d be fine.
It took Aaron a long time to believe that enough to fall asleep, though.
THEY woke up before the sun rose on Tuesday morning, Aaron because he had a compulsive need to make sure that everything was packed, checked, and double-checked, and Tyler to take Clue over to the cat sitter’s house. Aaron had bagels and travel mugs of coffee ready to go when Tyler got back, and he even managed to persuade Tyler out of his pajamas and into a pair of jeans for the road.
“It feels weird,” Tyler complained as he grudgingly trooped into his bedroom to change. “It’s not like we’re gonna be around anybody who cares what I wear, and we’ll spent most of our time in the car anyway.”