Underside of Courage (Beautifully Disturbed Series Book 2)

by Sarah Zolton Arthur

  “It’s not cute,” I call over my shoulder. “It’s manly.” Then I close the bathroom door.

  ***

  Jake has gone from the gangly, yet handsome kid I became friends with at fourteen, filling out every year since to the striking man walking our way. Looking very much like he could command a boardroom with his graceful stride. His charismatic presence fills the room. This Jake is not the same man to visit me just a few months ago on campus to deliver the invitation. Uncertainty then. Pride now.

  Darren, on the other hand, although dressed for the occasion, looks exactly as he did the last time I’d seen him, before I left State for GHU. Hair still longer in the front, shorter in the back so he has to continuously push his bangs from his eyes. Dark thick rimmed glasses and lanky as ever. No one can deny he’s handsome, but he’s handsome in that purposefully nerdy lit major way.

  He and I could not be more different. But seeing them together, however it works for them, it works.

  “You made it.” Jake pulls me out of my head by grabbing onto my arms and giving a friendly shake.

  “We made it.” Jake couldn’t have any idea how loaded a statement that is. Or maybe he does. He and Darren made it too. Under my breath I whisper. “We all made it.” That was meant only for him.

  Jake laughs one of those reflective laughs. “Yeah, we did.” Then he pulls me in for a hug. He feels familiar in my arms. How many hugs had I given and received over the years from the man? But he doesn’t feel right. And so I push back from my first love to reach for the hand of the love of my life.

  “Jake, I want you to meet Collin. Collin, Jake.”

  “Great to meet you, man. Thanks for coming.” They start to shake hands until Jake pulls Col in for a hug as well. “I feel like we’re family now. Family hugs.”

  “We’re family?” Col questions.

  That’s when I see Darren approach from the side, having left a group of people he’d been talking to, to join us. “Sure,” he begins to laugh. “Eskimo brothers.” We laugh too, throwing shoulder punches.

  Not exactly how “Eskimo brothers” works. I feel as if I’m supposed to be embarrassed, standing between two men I’ve had sex with countless times over the years. I’m not. If the tips of my ears are turning red, it’s from laughing so hard. Nothing more. Maybe Jake and I really can make friends work.

  When our laughter dies, Jake pulls Darren to stand in front of him, he drapes his arms around the man, holding him the way you’d hold someone more precious than air to you. “Kip, you remember Darren? Collin, this is my husband-to-be, Darren.”

  “Yes. Thanks for having us.” I slide my arm around Collin’s waist. “Darren, my boyfriend Collin.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Col says to him. We go from shoulder punches to proper handshakes. “Thanks for inviting me. I’ve never been to a gay wedding before.”

  “Or as we like to call it, a wedding.” Darren cuts in.

  “Dare, be nice.” Jake scolds him just like they’re, well, like they’re an old married couple.

  Collin tenses in my arms. So much that I want to yell at Darren, to come to Col’s defense. Yet, I think he needs to take the lead. I’ve got his back. I’ll always have his back, but something about the moment feels too weighty for me to let him off the hook.

  “I know. I know it’s just a wedding.” Col pauses to organize his thoughts. “At the same time, it’s not. I think I needed to see this. Does that make any sense?”

  Thank you Jake. He nods. “First one of these I went to, it felt like I’d stepped into some alternate universe. And Kip and I come from open families. We came out with our relationship at fifteen and both sets of parents were like, ‘yeah, duh.’ But still, a wedding? Just never seemed possible.”

  “My cousin Felix’s wedding?” Darren asks.

  Jake mouths his yes.

  “His was the first in my family. My mom cried. I didn’t think she liked Felix so much. She said that wasn’t why she was crying.”

  “I’ve been to a couple commitment ceremonies,” I offer. “Yours’ll be the first ‘legally binding’ wedding.” I break out the air quotes to emphasize legally binding. I used to break out the air quotes all the time around Jake. Funny how some things don’t change.

  “And let’s face it.” Jake again. “No matter how open, this is what all parents want for their kids. The ‘normal life’ even if it comes down an alternative path.”

  Darren turns in Jake’s arms to look at him, shocked expression and all. “Speak for yourself. I’m not alternative… I’m a trendsetter.”

  I’m curious about where the conversation will head when Jake goes to speak, Darren’s comment having sparked a little tête-à-tête between them. Pretty much all conversation stops as an ear piercing squeal rips through the restaurant. Both Jake and Darren step out of the way to avoid being plowed down by a woman charging at me yelling, “Kip! Kip!” loud enough to drown out any sound in a square mile radius around us.

  How I know it’s true love. Instead of moving like Jake and Darren, Collin holds me tighter, his solid body makes a strong presence. And his arms Col moves out in front of us so when she collides with me, and she does collide with me, I’m not crushed between the two.

  Her hold just as tight, her volume just as loud, she continues to yell in my face. “Kip! You’re here. Jake, you never said Kip was coming!”

  “Take it down a notch or four, Aunt Darla?” he asks.

  “Collin.” Since I’m stuck between them anyway, I give the introductions. “This is Jake’s crazy aunt Darla. She loves me.”

  She swats at my arm. “Love doesn’t begin to cover it. I’d have carried you around in my purse like a teacup yorkie if you’d have fit. Now, tell me about the fine, fine, fine specimen of manhood adoring you tonight?”

  “Well Aunt Darla, very proud to introduce my boyfriend Collin. He’s a Leo, likes to cuddle and we just moved in together.” I turn to Collin. “Darla’s an astrologer. She likes to know birth signs and hobbies.”

  “Cuddling is my hobby?”

  “The way you do it, yeah.”

  “Awe…” Darla cuts in. “Don’t have to consult the cards to see you two ending up here.”

  “At Jake and Darren’s rehearsal dinner?” I tease.

  “A rehearsal dinner of your own, dumbass.”

  A month ago a comment like that would’ve set Col’s body tight, mentally running for the hills. He’s fine though. I turn to look at him, to check his state of mind, and he winks at me. Come again?

  Chapter 32

  Collin

  Still hard to believe I’m here.

  All of us, and there are a lot, sitting around the long banquet table, shooting the shit. I almost feel removed, like I’m not here in the moment but watching the night unfold as a spectator. Kip and I both loosened our ties, unbuttoned top buttons. Jake and Darren lost theirs completely after the groom and groom dance.

  The table starting with just the four of us has quickly become the cool kids’ table everyone wants to sit at. With each old high school friend or college buddy more tales of not really Jake and Darren, but Jake and Kip unfold.

  “… and you set that car on fire.” Someone, Knox I think his name is, says. Um what? Maybe I should’ve paid more attention.

  “Shut up,” Kip orders. “We didn’t mean to set it on fire. Toby and Kayna were necking in the backseat. Toby shot his foot out and kicked the cigarette lighter. It hit the box with the bottle rockets. Perfectly innocent.”

  “Never seen Kay run so fast,” Jake teases.

  Then both Kip and Jake look to each other and say, “Poor Toby.” And burst out laughing to some inside joke the rest of us aren’t privy to. I have a feeling if they tried to explain, it would lose the desired effect in translation.

  A month ago I would have been feeding on some nasty jealousy. What with the loving, happy history the two of them will always share, that I’ll never be a part of. The way they loved each other in that youthful, first love sort of
way. But I had that. I had my moments of loving, happy history with Ben and Andrew. Kip, he never acted jealous. Sure he called me on my bullshit, but my bullshit had less to do with Andrew and more about shutting him out.

  I’m a bastard for thinking what I’m thinking, but if Ben’s Gran hadn’t died, we’d have never gone back and my head would still be just as fucked up as it had been, and I’d be lonely without Kip at my side, in my bed, holding my hand not walking five feet away so people don’t get the wrong idea about us. I wouldn’t be here tonight sitting, listening to anecdotes about my boyfriend’s life after watching two very cool men join their lives together.

  As fun as it’s been learning about a teenaged Kip, my mind keeps wandering back to the wedding. How the wedding party was made up of groomsmaids and groomsmen. I’ve never seen such a thing at a wedding before. And how the groomsmaids wore these elegantly sexy strapless numbers. All gray with a different colored sash tied at the waist. Or how the groomsmen all wore gray suits, each wearing a different colored tie.

  Mostly though, how Darren and Jake walked down the aisle. Darren first accompanied by his mother and father proudly in his black tux with pink shirt and monochrome tie. Then Jake, just as proudly, escorted by his mother, in a matching black tux but his with a robin’s egg blue shirt and monochrome tie. Their wedding wasn’t some wedding knockoff. They planned. They spent money. Pure class all the way.

  Recited their own vows.

  Exchanged rings.

  But when they were pronounced Mr. and Mr. Jackson-Ramos, and took their first kiss as husbands in front of a room full of people cheering, happy shouting and crying, the air left my lungs in a whoosh! As if I’d been sucker punched. Tears stung my eyes as I looked around thinking, what a time we live in.

  And then I felt it.

  For the first time in my life, I felt it. Andrew couldn’t have brought me to it because he wasn’t out to the world. Not Ben or Errol or Bri or even Elle could bring me to it. Because none of them know, really know how it feels to be told time and again you’re a broken, morally corrupt person for simply wanting to be loved. Because your love is less than everyone else’s. Because your love is vulgar, tainted and shameful.

  But I felt it. And feeling it just reiterated why I’m none of those things.

  I felt it because Kip brought me to it. Kip did. He saw and felt and just knew what I didn’t or wouldn’t allow myself to see or feel or know. But I felt it in that hall. I felt acceptance. For all my friends who tried with me, acceptance couldn’t come from people who love me. No one was there for me today. They were there to celebrate my kind of love, and they didn’t know me from Adam.

  The well-wishers, along with the grooms, the wedding party and their families moved from the large banquet hall on the third floor of The Hilton Suites down a floor to the large banquet hall where the reception would take place. White draping fabric and twinkling white lights lent to the air of pure elegance.

  I don’t know what came over me. Maybe all the love in the air. Maybe the feeling of acceptance, hell maybe it was the four glasses of champagne I’d downed throughout dinner. Whatever the reason, when it was time to toast the grooms, I didn’t hesitate to stand and wait for the MC to hand me the mic.

  “What are you doing?” Kip asks. “Sit down.”

  “It’s okay Muffin. Hang on.” I assure him. And then I go for it. “My name is Collin Pratt. No one here would know me seeing as I just met the grooms last night at the rehearsal dinner.” I pause to take a breath. “But I’m here with my boyfriend Kip Daniels, who I’m sure most of you remember dated Jake for years. So to Jake, thank you for knowing when to say when with Kip. Because everything he wasn’t for you, he is for me and so much more. Thank you for meeting Darren and showing the world what true love looks like. No one in this room could deny what you two share. A love so present it’s like a physical entity standing guard behind you at all times.” I pause again for dramatic effect.

  And Kip calls out to the audience, “He’s a writer, he can’t help it.” From his words we’re met with the sounds of laughter.

  So I finish, “Thank you both for reaching out to Kip, for inviting us both. For showing me what unconditional acceptance looks like through all these fine people attending tonight. I want what you have. I want it. All of it, with the man seated next to me.” Then I cast my eyes down toward a very silent, slack jawed Kip and tell him, “I love you Kip.” Finally to end, I raise my glass to the grooms and say, “Thank you.”

  The room stays silent for several uncomfortable beats until both Jake and Darren jog toward me. They pull me into a hug, not just one but both men. And they continue to hug until Kip stands to tell them, “My turn.”

  Then four arms become two. The only two arms I want to feel hugging me for the rest of forever.

  “Hey,” Kip nudges my elbow. I’d been so lost in thought I hadn’t seen the group dissipate. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” I answer, noticing the first bars of Endless Love playing through the speakers. “Dance with me?”

  His angelic face splits into one of his megawatt angelic smiles. But he doesn’t answer with words, standing instead he holds his hand out for me to take as he leads me onto the crowded dancefloor.

  We stand close. Our bodies pressed together from chest to shins, swaying more than dancing. Just swaying.

  “Did you really mean what you said earlier?”

  “All of it.” I glide my hand from the small of his back down to rest just above his ass while my hand between his shoulder blades drags up and down his spine in short lines.

  “You really want this? The wedding. The marriage?”

  “Only with you.”

  “Holy shit Col. Holy shit.”

  “Can you say anything else?”

  “Holy fucking shit.”

  Acknowledgement

  I can’t believe my Collin and Kip are finally going out for everyone to meet. I’m so excited. I want everyone to love these two guys as much as I do. That being said, there are a few people who deserve a little shout out.

  My forever BFF and fellow author Heather Young-Nichols, girl yous a talented lady. You’ve been such an immense help to me in figuring all this writerly stuff out. As always, I’d be lost without you.

  All the staff, especially my café people, at my local Barnes and Noble. All the time I spend around you all and your delicious coffee helped get this book off the ground more than you probably realize.

  And finally, my family. You all are the backbone of the operation. Period. I love you and appreciate you.

  About the Author

  Sarah lives in the great state of Michigan where they have two seasons instead of four: Winter and Construction. Where potholes make people feel like they’re going off road, when really, it’s a city street. And they give distance in time it takes to get there instead of miles. She’d be fine living just about anywhere so long as she had her coffee and a book with kissing.

  In Sarah’s world all books have kissing and end in some form of HEA.

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