by Alexa Land
I was doing what I’d always wanted to do. I was leaving a legacy. My life was going to mean something. I just knew the art center was going to make a difference for a lot of people, and if it gave even one kid hope and awakened a love of art, then it was all worthwhile.
I leaned against Shea and his arms encircled me securely. I felt the warmth of his body and the steady beat of his heart against my back. He felt so solid and reassuring.
I’d decided once and for all to forget about the nursing home, but I hadn’t told him yet. I was going to stay with the love of my life right to the end. My pride still struggled with the embarrassment of him seeing what I was going to become, and I hated the fact that I was going to be such a burden, but his friend Leo had been right. If the situation were reversed, I would never, ever let Shea go off by himself. So how could I expect him to be okay with doing the same thing?
*****
As we left the Bay Area behind and began to cut through the agricultural center of the state on Highway Five, Nana started all of us on a sing-along. That made Joshie shoot us a look over his shoulder and raise the sound-proof barrier between the back of the limo and the front seat. Nana loved Elton John and would have gone through his entire song book, but eventually we managed to branch out to some other stuff as well, taking turns calling out songs. When it was Chance’s turn he suggested shyly, “How about ‘Evermore’ by Zan Tillane?”
I smiled at that, then said, “Not all of you know this, but Zan is my father and he was always proud of that song. It wasn’t a huge hit, but it’s one of his favorites.” It was time to let the rest of my friends in on that secret. There was no reason not to. I trusted everyone here.
Nana in particular had a million questions, but I just said, “He’s in good health and choosing to live his life out of the public eye. Needless to say, we all need to keep this quiet so the paparazzi don’t hunt him down and make his life miserable.” Nana pantomimed locking her lips and throwing away the key.
I pulled out my phone and called Zan. When he answered, I said, “I have something for you, Dad. I’m on my way to Skye’s wedding in Oregon and we’re singing our favorite songs in the back of Nana’s limo. This next song was suggested by my friend Chance.” I put my dad on speaker and began singing ‘Evermore’. My voice wasn’t nearly as good as my father’s, but when everyone joined in, we did it justice.
When we finished, my dad sounded a little choked up. “Ah, boyo, you remembered all the words,” he said.
“Of course I did. I know every word to every song you’ve ever written. I don’t know if I’ve ever actually said this to you, but I’m so proud that you’re my dad.”
Zan chuckled and said as his voice broke a little, “So basically, you thought you’d call your old man and make him start blubbering.”
I smiled and said, “Yup, that was my plan. I love you, Dad. I’ll be gone a couple days, but call my cell if you need anything and I’ll make sure it gets taken care of.”
“Love you too, son. Congratulations to Skye. I haven’t met his fiancé, but he’s bound to be a pretty remarkable man, given the fact that he won that boy’s heart.” I’d taken my best friend to meet my dad a couple weeks ago, and they totally hit it off.
“He is.”
“Give Shea a hug for me, I could hear him singing in the background. Such a lovely voice. Say hello to the rest of your friends as well.”
“Will do. Talk to you soon, Dad.”
After we disconnected and I returned the phone to my pocket, River grinned at me and quipped, “And the award for most unexpected newsflash goes to Christian.”
I smiled and changed the subject by saying, “I think it’s Nana’s turn to pick the next song. Let me guess: Elton John?”
*****
Everything was going along swimmingly until an hour or so later when Nana exclaimed, “What the fuck!” She then scrambled over Shea and me and knocked on the divider.
When Jessie lowered the glass panel, all he said was, “On it!” He then took the next exit.
“On what?” Cole asked, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose.
The limo made a sharp right, so we were now on an access road running parallel to the freeway. “I need to swing around,” Jessie said, sliding his cap back on his head. “I can’t get it from this angle.” He then brought the long car around in a wide U-turn, kicking up dust in a fallow field. I was surprised we didn’t get stuck.
Once we were pointed the other way, I saw what had upset Nana. Someone had erected a home-made billboard beside the freeway that said ‘God hates fags.’
“Battle stations everyone!” Nana exclaimed. “Joshie, come back here, sweetie.” The boy climbed over the seat, Benny scrambling over with him, and Nana put a seatbelt on the kid while Skye scooped up the dog and held on to him. “Careful, Jessie,” she called. “We don’t want the airbags going off again!”
“Yes ma’am!” he called, and then he gunned the engine. The limo hopped the embankment and then flattened the big sign with a satisfying crunch. For good measure, Jessie rolled back and forth over it a few times, then threw the car in reverse and swung us around so we were back on the access road. Dust kicked up behind us as we sped out of there.
Everyone burst out laughing and applauding. “We’re definitely going to jail,” Skye exclaimed. He looked delighted, his eyes sparkling.
“Totally worth it,” Shea said.
I chuckled at that. “And you used to be such a nice, law-abiding boy.”
Surprisingly, we made it across the Oregon border a couple hours later without a police chase. Portland was still five hours away at the northern end of the state, so we decided to take a break in Ashland, a cute little theater town. Shea and I grabbed a couple slices of pizza while Nana led a shopping and dining expedition around the Plaza. We headed into a gorgeous park that was located right behind the shops and restaurants, and Shea took my hand as we walked along the creek. It was really cold, but he’d thought to pack my warmest jacket.
We went halfway across an ornate pedestrian bridge and stopped to watch the creek churning beneath us, our breath forming clouds in the air. That was when I told him I’d changed my mind about the nursing home. “I guess I’ll keep my apartment because I still don’t like the idea of going to live with my dad. It should prove to be fairly wheelchair accessible when I get to that point. And we’re definitely going to hire nurses, lots of them. I really want to make sure you and Skye don’t get stressed out.”
I’d been watching the creek, but I turned to look at Shea then. His eyes were bright with tears as he grabbed me in a hug and whispered, “Thank you.”
“Oh no, I’m the one that should be thanking you. I know I haven’t been acting like it, but I really am incredibly grateful that you’re willing to help me.”
“What finally made you change your mind?”
“It was a conversation I had with your friend Leo. He told me the same things everyone else had, but I guess he did it at the right time, and in a way that finally got through to me. He asked me if I could let you go if you were the one who was sick, and I knew I couldn’t. There’d be absolutely no way. I realized then that I couldn’t expect you to do what I wouldn’t be able to.”
Shea smiled at me and said, “I’ll have to remember to thank him. Speaking of Leo, it’s so great that you included him and Cas and Ridley in the mural. That’s exactly what they used to do when we were in junior high, too, they’d sit off in a corner and play board games during our lunch break.” The trio had contributed to the art center by helping set up a rec room for the kids to use before and after classes. They’d brought in stacks of board games and had helped paint a bunch of wooden tables and chairs in bright colors.
“They were definitely a part of it.”
Shea said, “I love the fact that the art center is turning out so great, and that it’s the result of your friends, my friends and our friends, all coming together. With you as our fearless leader, of course.”
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“And you as my trusty co-captain.”
“Care to act out our scene in the mural?” He tilted his head to indicate an empty playground right behind us on the banks of the creek.
We both laughed as he pushed me on the swings. After a while, the rest of our group caught up with us. They not only were accompanied by the dog on a leash, they also brought along a medium-sized kennel containing Skye’s cat and a tiny pet carrier holding his pink pet mouse. I hadn’t realized the whole family had been Jessie’s copilots up front.
Jessie climbed to the very top of a big play structure and announced that he was king of the world while Chance got on the swing to my left. Vincent sat on the swing to my right with Trevor on his lap, and the two swayed slowly as they kissed. Meanwhile Skye, Dare, River and Cole tried to make each other puke on the little spinning merry-go-round while the dog bounced up and down and yipped excitedly. Nana followed Jessie onto the jungle gym and went down the slide over and over, whooping excitedly each time. Joshie, the actual kid in the group, was the only one who refrained, sighing and shaking his head before sitting on a bench beside the cat and mouse and pulling out a paperback. Funnily enough, that was exactly what I’d painted him doing in the mural.
The cold finally drove us back to the limo, still chuckling, our cheeks pink and our noses running. Skye, who’d spent part of his childhood in Oregon and knew his way around, directed Jessie to a drive-through coffee kiosk called Dutch Brothers, and we all got piping hot drinks before we returned to the highway. “This is a perfect day,” I whispered to Shea as I snuggled with him, a big coffee warming my hands and my boyfriend’s arms warming the rest of me.
He smiled and said, “Couldn’t agree more.”
*****
Skye’s mom Tina, her boyfriend Hawk, the boyfriend’s sister and a whole mess of kids lived outside Portland in what had once been a small vineyard. A charming, faded farmhouse was nestled amid rolling hills and overgrown, dormant grapevines. Apparently it had once belonged to the boyfriend’s father. The current occupants didn’t seem terribly interested in maintaining the place and I could just picture the vines engulfing the house in a few years.
They were all awake and waiting for us when we rolled in a little before midnight. Tina was an aging hippie with more grey than blonde in her curly hair, and Hawk was tall and lanky with two skinny blond braids hanging past his shoulders. Even though Tina was confined to bed, she was clearly running the entire operation. She gave each of us a bone-crushing hug, including the people she was meeting for the first time. The smell of rosemary enveloped me when it was my turn.
“Hi Mom,” River said when she released him from her grasp. “Nice to see that being knocked up hasn’t weakened your Kung Fu grip.”
“I’m perfectly fine,” she said with a wave of her hand, which made a row of bangles on her wrist jingle, “except for this stupid blood pressure thing. Did I tell you it’s a boy, by the way? You and Skye are going to have a baby brother!”
“Have you picked out a name yet?” Skye asked. “Maybe Pond? Or Hillock? How about Moss? That goes well with River and Skye.”
“Moss,” Tina mused. “I like that.”
“Mom!” Skye exclaimed. “I was kidding! Don’t you dare name that baby Moss! At least give him a shot at not getting teased every day of his life.”
She shrugged and said, “Kids would tease even if I named the baby something perfectly normal. And how boring would that be?” Tina spotted Joshie then, lingering toward the back of the group, and greeted him warmly. He’d lived with her for a while before Trevor and Vincent adopted him. Apparently he wasn’t a fan of any of Tina’s boyfriend’s kids, so once the hellos were out of the way, he said he was going to read in the limo and took off.
“I’ll go with him and make sure he doesn’t freeze,” Jessie said, zipping up. He’d paired a black leather jacket and black wool tights with his shorts and the rest of his uniform, the winter version of ‘chauffer strippergram’ apparently.
“Thanks,” Trevor said before asking, “Where will we be sleeping? I’ll bring in Joshie’s stuff and try to shift him someplace warmer.”
Hawk’s sister Enid pointed the way. The farmhouse was pretty maxed out with seven or eight people already living there, but it turned out there was a bunk house back in the orchard that they’d kind of fixed up for us. Nana took one look at it and said, “I’m going to find a Marriot and I’m taking Joshie and Jessie with me. I’ll be back first thing in the morning. Do you want me to bring anything back from town?”
“No thanks, Nana,” Skye told her, shoving one of the bunks across the floor until it rested against the one Dare was going to use. “We’re just going to keep this simple. The wedding official will be here at one and I guess we’ll have the ceremony in the living room, in front of the fireplace.”
Nana stared at him for a moment, then spun on her heel. “I’m going to have that herd of kids clean up in there, they’re plenty old enough to pitch in. We can’t have you getting married surrounded by old newspapers and dirty dishes. For that matter, what are they doing letting your knocked up mother live in squalor like that? Someone needs to take charge of this situation!”
Skye chuckled at that as we watched her march back through the orchard. “She’s not wrong,” he said. Meanwhile, Dare let the dog off his leash and filled a bowl for him from a water bottle. Benny began patrolling and sniffing the bunkhouse. Draco, the blond cat, was let out of his kennel, which revealed that he was wearing a little blue sweater along with a harness and leash. He settled down on a bunk, tucked his feet under him, and shut his eyes. The mouse didn’t get to leave his carrier and just stared at us.
Throughout all of that, Shea had been starting fires in the three potbelly stoves that were positioned between the two rows of bunks. I glanced at the space we were in and asked, “Why would a vineyard need a couple dozen workers?”
“This was a logging camp long before someone thought to grow grapes here,” Skye said as he shook out one of the blankets that had been left for us. “I know it’s a bit rustic. Sorry about that.”
“It’s awesome,” I told him cheerfully. “I never got to go to summer camp. Now I feel like I have.”
“We’re kind of missing the summer part of that,” Shea said as he rubbed his hands together, “but these should warm us up pretty soon.”
“If not, I can figure out how to stay warm,” River said, slipping his arms around his boyfriend and pulling him close as Cole grinned shyly.
Vincent, on the other hand, looked skeptical. “Want to go with my grandmother?” he asked his husband. “The Marriot’s sounding pretty appealing.”
Trevor smiled at him. “Where’s your spirit of adventure? After this you’ll be able to say you slept in a real logging camp bunkhouse!”
Vincent grinned a little. “And that’ll do what, exactly? Make my brothers jealous? Gianni won’t stay anyplace with less than five stars.”
In response to that, Trevor went over to the dirty window and drew five stars in the grime. “There you go. Also, Gi’s kind of a princess. You can tell him I said that.” Trevor glanced at something to his left. “I forget, are you afraid of spiders?”
“I’m definitely not a fan,” Vincent told him. “Why do you ask?”
Trevor stomped his foot, then dragged it out of sight. “No reason.”
“Yeah, I’m going to the Marriot.” Vincent fled with his chuckling husband right on his heels.
“See you in the morning, guys,” Trevor called on the way out the door.
I turned to look at Chance. He was doing that quiet haunting thing again, remaining near me but not saying anything. “What about you?” I asked him. “Do you want to retreat to a hotel?”
He shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like this. I can’t wait to take pictures when it’s light out.”
“That’s the spirit,” I said as I put an arm around his shoulders. “As for you,” I said, gesturing at Shea, “I don’t even need to ask
. Look at you! You’re completely in your element. I’ll bet you used to be a Boy Scout, am I right?”
“Right.”
“You probably even go camping on purpose, don’t you?”
He smiled at me. “Yup, on purpose and everything. Do you?”
“Oh no. I’m what you call a city boy. I’ve never been camping, but I’m going to go ahead and say this is primitive enough to qualify.”
“Not even close,” Shea said as he shook out his bedding and mine, then pushed our bunks together.
“No? Then what does?”
“You and me snug in a tent, a campfire, and s’mores. Definitely s’mores.”
“You’ve done the impossible, you’ve actually made camping sound appealing. Let’s go as soon as the weather warms up. In the meantime, that’s pretty close to a campfire,” I said, indicating the flames glowing inside the potbelly stove. “Think there might be ingredients for s’mores in the farmhouse?”
Skye picked up his fiancé’s hand. “We’ll go find out and say goodnight to my mom.”
Later on, as we took turns toasting marshmallows through the open door of the stove and drinking hot chocolate spiked with rum and cinnamon, Dare flashed Skye a huge smile. “This is the oddest bachelor party ever. It’s absolutely perfect.”
“Like my little brother was going to have a normal one,” River said cheerfully.
“Hey, I was just thinking. Do you guys want to take a stroll down the aisle after us tomorrow?” Skye asked his brother. “The wedding official can do a two-fer so you can finally make an honest man of Cole.”
“You go right ahead and be conventional,” River teased. “Cole and I are just fine with living in sin. Aren’t we, hon?”
Cole kissed his boyfriend’s cheek and said, “This couldn’t be more perfect. I say we keep doing exactly what we’re doing.”