by J. M. Snyder
But his mother disconnected the call. “Damn,” Remy muttered, dropping the phone beside him on the bed.
With his head tucked against Remy’s armpit, Lane sighed, content. He stretched his arm around Remy’s chest and hugged his lover tight. “You know she only calls me dear because she doesn’t remember my name.”
Remy rolled over onto Lane, pinning him to the bed again. “Hmm, you may be right. Now, where were we before we were so rudely interrupted?”
* * * *
The next time they woke, it was thanks to Braden banging on their bedroom door. “Dad! There’s no cereal!” he called out, then rattled the doorknob, before knocking harder. “Dad! Are you still asleep?”
“Who can sleep through that?” Remy murmured groggily.
Lane burrowed down deeper into the bed sheets. “Teach him how to order room service.”
“There’s a kitchen. We should put it to use.” Remy stretched awake and yawned as he kicked the blanket off his legs. In the gray morning light streaming through the vertical blinds, his pale skin took on an ashy hue. He gave Lane a quick kiss, then slid out of bed, taking a moment to straighten his boxers and pull on a T-shirt before answering the door.
“Add it to the list of things to do today. Stop and buy cereal and milk so someone—” Remy opened the door and Braden burst into the room, already a bundle of excited energy. “—can make his own breakfast. Good morning to you, too.”
“Hey, Dad. Hey, Lane.” Braden went straight to the windows and yanked on the cord, sending the blinds skirting across their rod as sunlight filled the room. “Can you believe it’s winter? It looks like summer out there!”
Lane groaned and pulled the covers up over his head. “Why do you guys hate sleep?”
The bed shook as Braden jumped onto it, narrowly missing Lane’s legs. He pulled them in close to his body and rolled into a tight ball. “Get up!” Braden cried with glee. “Get up! Get up! Dad! Hey, where—”
“Bathroom,” Remy explained.
Which made Lane realize he needed to pee, as well. “No fair!” he cried, crawling out from beneath the covers as Braden tried to tackle him. When Braden grabbed his waist, Lane found himself being wrestled to the ground—the boy held on, pulling him down, and Lane laughed as he staggered beneath Braden’s added weight. Together they rolled across the floor, dragging the blankets off the bed, the sheets twined around their legs.
“Got you!” Braden said.
Lane didn’t think so. “No, I got you.” He dug his fingers into Braden’s belly, tickling the boy, who giggled and squirmed and tried to get away.
“Stop!” Braden wheezed, breathless, as he shimmied and laughed. Before long, he started to hiccup, which only made him laugh harder, and started Lane snickering, too. “Stop! Lane, please!”
“Fine.” Lane sat back and grinned at Braden, who sprawled in the bed sheets, sweaty and giddy. The boy was gasping, trying to catch his breath, the hint of a smile still on his face. When Lane poked his tummy, Braden squealed and wriggled away.
“Hey,” Lane said.
Braden frowned, listening, hands curved protectively over his belly. “What?”
Lane smirked. “You know who’s really ticklish?”
His arms tightened around his waist. “Who?”
Dropping his voice as if it were a secret, Lane said, “Your father.”
“Nuh-uh.” But Braden sat up, interested. “How do you know?”
Lane gave him a sardonic look. “Trust me, I know. But not on his stomach, like you.”
“Where then?” Braden asked.
Lane pushed down the blankets and ran a hand up under the back of Braden’s knee. “Right here, behind his knee. Both of them. You know what we should do?”
Braden’s eyes widened, and he grinned. “Tickle him! Let’s go!”
Before Lane could answer, Braden was on his feet and hurrying out of the bedroom. Lane scrambled to keep up. They made it to the bathroom just as Remy opened the door. When he saw them, he smiled. “Who’s ready for room service?”
Braden dived at Remy’s legs, already giggling as he skidded on the floor in his socks. He hit the wall with his shoulder and jammed his fingers into the backs of Remy’s knees. “Got you!” he cried.
“Hey!” Remy tried to dance aside, but Lane was in the way, keeping him in place. “What’s this all—Brae, stop!” He started to laugh, pulling one leg up then goose-stepping to move the other out of reach instead. Despite his laughter, he told his son, “This isn’t funny. Stop it now.”
“You’re laughing!” Braden crowed. “I’m tickling you!”
Remy fell against Lane, who caught him and grinned as he writhed beneath the tickling torture. “Stop already, please!” Remy begged.
But Braden was merciless. “That’s not the right word!”
“Try uncle,” Lane suggested, holding Remy by the elbows. His lover leaned against Lane’s chest, head on his shoulder, breathless with laughter. It almost seemed like he was trying to climb into Lane’s arms entirely, but Braden wouldn’t be shaken off.
Finally Remy cried out, “Uncle! Uncle!”
Braden fell back with a huff. “Lane! You shouldn’t have told him!”
Remy gasped as he tried to catch his breath. “I should say the same thing. How’d he know about my knees?”
With a grin, Lane ducked between father and son to disappear inside the bathroom. “Lucky guess?”
Remy swatted at him, but he managed to shut the door before Remy’s hand met his backside. “My ass!” his lover called. “Nobody knows about them but you!”
“Dad!” Braden cried. “You said—”
“I know what I said!”
Lane smirked at his reflection in the mirror above the sink.
* * * *
A quick check online at arriving flights over breakfast showed only one plane expected in from LAX around noon. Remy wanted to leave early so he could get a rental car. “I refuse to ride in that rusted out dune buggy again,” he said, referring to Chell’s Jeep.
“We’ll probably need two cars,” Lane pointed out. “Maybe not right away—your parents can squeeze in the back seat with Brae—but there’s no way my whole family’s going to fit in one vehicle unless we rent a minivan.”
Remy smirked. “Yeah, there’s a sexy car. We’d be the only gay couple cruising Hawaii in a ride that would make a soccer mom jealous.”
From his spot in front of the TV, Braden spoke up. “I can stay here while you get Nana and Pops.”
“You can turn off the games for two minutes instead,” Remy told him. “Lane, you about ready?”
“Aww, Dad!” Braden complained.
Leaning forward from where he sat on the couch, Lane ruffled Braden’s hair. “Come on, sport. You know you want to see your grandparents. I bet they brought you something nice.”
“Something weird, you mean.” But Braden turned off the game and the TV, and slipped on a pair of flip-flops.
Lane stepped into his own sandals and marveled at the complete change of wardrobe they’d undergone. When they left Richmond the previous morning, they were dressed in bulky clothes, bundled up against the winter chill, and now they wore T-shirts, shorts, and boat shoes. It felt wonderful to be so scantily clad again. Lane couldn’t wait to strip off his shirt and splash into the pool or run headlong into the ocean. He imagined the water would still be warm, as it was in late September, after a summer of sun. Once everyone had arrived safely and the details of their ceremony squared away, he planned to relax and spend Christmas relaxing on the beach, soaking up some rays and trying to get a little color before he had to walk down the aisle.
They called a cab to take them to the airport. Remy sat up front with the driver, asking questions about how to navigate the busy streets of Honolulu while Lane and Braden sat in the back. The ride was much more comfortable than it had been the first time, when Lane had been holding onto the window frame of Chell’s Jeep for dear life and keeping his eyes shut as tight as he
could. She’d always been a little “out there,” but now she was definitely…how had Remy put it? Certifiable.
It was ten ‘til noon when they arrived back at the airport. “Here again?” Braden griped as the cab dropped them off near the stretch of rental car offices.
Lane draped an arm around the boy’s shoulders. “Next time you won’t have to come,” he promised. “You and Remy can stay back at the hotel with your grandparents while I pick up my family.”
“Are there going to be any kids my age?” Braden asked, hopeful.
Squeezing his shoulder, Lane said, “No, sorry. Emma’s only still a baby.”
Braden’s face fell. “Oh…”
“At least that means you won’t have to share the video games,” Lane pointed out.
Braden grinned. “True!”
Remy had gone ahead of them to get a car, and since it was so nice out, they waited on a bench just outside the rental office instead of going in with him. Braden noticed a seashell mixed in with the pebbles around the base of an ornamental palm tree planted along the sidewalk, and stuck it in his pocket. Then he looked for more shells, hunkering down to scramble through the stones to find anything that caught his fancy. “Look!” he cried, holding up a small conch shell. A few seconds later, he held up another. “Look at this!”
Lane squinted in the bright sunlight but couldn’t see much of anything. Still, he said, “Uh-huh,” and made a mental note to pick up a pair of cheap sunglasses as soon as he could. Why he hadn’t thought to pack any, he didn’t know.
After about ten minutes, Remy came out of the office, folding a rental agreement as a set of car keys jingled from his hand. Lane shielded his eyes as he looked up at his lover. “What’d you get?”
“A full-size sedan,” Remy admitted. “I wanted something smaller—”
“We’re going to have a lot of people,” Lane reminded him.
“It was the Nissan Altima or the Dodge Caravan,” Remy said, “and you know how I feel about minivans. Plus, this has GPS. Seats five comfortably—”
“Which means there will be plenty of room for the elder McIntoshes.” Lane glanced at his phone. “Who should be landing right about now.”
Braden jumped up from where he squatted amid the rocks. “Can we watch their plane land? Please? Please!”
“I don’t think so,” Remy told him.
Braden kicked the rocks at his feet. “Aww, why not? No fair!”
“They might not let you,” Lane said, slipping his hand into Remy’s. “We’ll see, okay?”
Braden dragged behind them, arms crossed, pouting at the ground. Remy looked back at his son and shook his head. “Good idea not bringing him with you later,” he told Lane. Raising his voice, he added, “I think somebody needs a nap.”
“I do not!” Braden cried out, his voice shrill.
“Then snap out of this mood, mister,” Remy told him.
Braden kicked at the sidewalk but didn’t answer. Yeah, Lane didn’t think he’d be bringing the boy with him when he returned to the airport to pick up his own family that evening.
Chapter 9
Remy waited for his parents’ arrival with mixed emotions. He hadn’t seen them in years, not since his father retired and decided to trade in their staid lifestyle for an RV. Since then, Ralph and Edna McIntosh had traveled the byroads and highways of America, never staying in any one place for very long, enjoying their twilight years and spending the last of their hard-earned savings. “Won’t be a penny left for you when we’re dead and gone,” his father once joked when Remy asked how they managed to pay for gas despite rising prices at the pump.
His mother had told him not to worry. “We’re fine, dear. Finally living out our dreams, you know.”
“Fast food, cramped quarters, and a chemical toilet? That’s your dream?” Remy wanted to know at the time.
But it only earned him a motherly cluck of concern, and every few weeks he received a postcard from wherever they were passing through at the moment. They never lingered anywhere for long, and sometimes he wondered if they were avoiding the east coast entirely just to keep from having to stop in and see him. They’d only met Lane once—he might be right, Remy’s mother might really not know his name. She’d been more than a little surprised when Remy called to tell her he was engaged.
“Again?” had been her exact response. “I thought you were seeing that boy now. What happened with that?”
“No, Mom,” Remy told her, “he’s the one I’m going to marry.”
On the small screen of his iPhone, he saw her shake her head as if that were the craziest thing she’d heard all day. “Really, honey. Do you think that’s wise?”
“Mom, I love him.” Remy’s parents knew he liked men as well as women, and they had seemed to get along well with Lane. They were unconventional, too, unlike other people their age, and still embraced the feel good, free love, harm none vibes they had tuned into during the 1960s. Of everyone he knew, they were the last people he thought would be opposed to his getting married to another man. Trying to reason with his mother, he said, “Kate doesn’t have any problem with it, and if anyone did, it’d be her.”
“That’s just it, sweetie.” His mother gave him a tight-lipped smile, as if she knew what she was going to say might hurt his feelings, but she had to get it out anyway. “You’ve already done this once, you know? Maybe rushing into it again isn’t the smartest thing…”
* * * *
Remy flushed with the memory of the call. He was not rushing into this wedding! If anything, it was long overdue. He and Lane were perfect together, and the life they had was already bliss. The ceremony on the twenty-eighth would only cement their union in the eyes of the law.
If they could get a marriage license in time. He’d filled out the form online and received a confirmation number, which he’d need when they went to the Department of Health to get the license, but Kate hadn’t sent a copy of the divorce decree yet. While he waited for his parents’ plane to unload, he checked his email on his phone again. No, nothing. What the hell was she waiting for?
Lane saw him tapping his phone and leaned over. “Still no word from Kate?”
“No.” Remy pocketed the phone before Braden could ask to play with it. “What the hell? I asked her for it last night. She knows how urgent it is. I had hoped we might be able to go by this afternoon but apparently not.”
“Maybe she didn’t send it because her flight’s back on schedule,” Lane suggested.
Remy didn’t think so. “She would’ve texted to let me know.”
Lane shrugged. “Then maybe her power’s out or something. If it’s snowing hard enough to keep planes from taking off, you know there have to be power lines down all over the place.”
“God.” Closing his eyes, Remy pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to think of happy thoughts. He and Lane on an empty stretch of sand, the surf crashing at their feet. Palm trees swaying in a tropical breeze, gulls crying overhead, no one around for miles. Lane’s warm hand on his thigh easing up towards his crotch, angling for his erection, his heart pounding in time with the tide, his blood heating at his lover’s touch—
“Nana!” Braden cried, shattering Remy’s daydream and bringing him back to reality.
Lane patted Remy’s knee. “They’re here.”
“Thank you, Jesus,” Remy muttered. He covered Lane’s hand with his own and gave his lover’s fingers a quick squeeze. “I know one little boy who’s staying with his grandparents tonight so his father can finally get some action between the sheets.”
With a laugh, Lane said, “Okay, now I’m more excited to see them than he is.”
Remy and Lane stood as Braden led Remy’s parents over. Ralph McIntosh stood as tall as Remy did, his once-blond hair now leaden gray, his eyes magnified behind thick, frameless glasses. He was slim and angular, and towered over his petite wife, Edna, who barely reached his shoulder. Her steel curls poofed out around her head like a halo, adding another five inches to he
r height. They both were dressed like tourists, in loud, clashing shirts and baggy Bermuda shorts. The straw purse slung over her shoulder looked big enough to carry Braden in, and Ralph had a fanny pack strapped around his waist. On their feet were Birkenstock sandals and knee-high socks.
Remy took one look and winced. “Hey, you two! You look great!” To Lane, he muttered, “Not.”
“Play nice,” Lane murmured. As Remy’s parents approached, he held out his hand to shake theirs. “Mr. McIntosh, Mrs. McIntosh, it’s a pleasure to meet you again.”
Remy’s father shook Lane’s hand, but his mother threw her arms around Lane in a fierce hug. “Call me Mom, dear. You’re family now.”
“It’s Lane,” Remy told her.
Stepping back, she made a shooing motion with her hands. “I know that. Really. I’m not senile yet. What time is it?”
Remy smirked as he exchanged an amused glance with Lane. “What, no hug for me?”
“Oh, come here, you.” She swept him into an embrace and rocked him back and forth a moment before releasing him. “There. Hugged. Time?”
Remy fished his phone out of his pocket. “Ten after twelve. You two have a hot date, or something? Can we maybe get a bite to eat first?”
His father shrugged. “I could eat. Edna, you?”
With a huff, his mother sighed. “Fine. But just grab something around here. Your father and I have somewhere we need to be at one.”
Remy had started to lead the way towards the food court, but stopped and turned to frown at her announcement. “Where? Check-in at the hotel is at three.”
“Well, hmm.” Suddenly she couldn’t seem able to meet his gaze; she fluffed her hair, fiddled with her sunglasses, and patted her purse, distracted. Finally she said, “You tell him, Ralph.”
Remy knew she didn’t like to be the bearer of bad news—she had a history of passing that task to his father. “Tell me what?”
Ralph McIntosh flashed the same disarming grin Remy himself found so useful on occasion. Kate would’ve recognized it well, and from Lane’s soft groan, he did, too. “Oh no,” Lane muttered. “What now?”