His Best Man

by Elle Keaton

  Rod had held it together when the doctor told him his leg was touch-and-go at first; he’d managed not to cry when the physical therapist performed torture on him; he’d stoically accepted that even if either of his parents knew about the accident, they wouldn’t make the trip to see for themselves that he was going to recover. So why, when three grubby second-and third-graders from the school bus route showed up in his room with balloons, did he start to cry?

  Travis stood up so the kids could come closer to the bed.

  “Mr. Beton, we brought you balloons.” Maurice spoke for the group; not surprising, since he was also one of the most vocal kids riding the bus route. “Are you going to be okay now? Everyone on the bus is very worried about you. Me and Vincent and Sydney are the only ones who could come, because there are only three back seats in the car. My mom brought us.” Maurice tagged that last part on the end as if he was worried Rod would think they’d driven themselves.

  Rod wiped his eyes of the offending moisture, offering as cheery a grin as possible to his bus kids. Maurice approached the bed cautiously. He was a cute kid, taller than the rest, with curly dark hair. There was a gap between his front teeth where he’d lost a baby tooth since Rod had last seen him.

  “Mom said there was an accident and you broke your leg.”

  “Mom” came toward the bed. Rod had seen her before, waiting at Maurice’s stop.

  “Hi, I hope this is okay. Maurice has been relentless about visiting. I’m Shanda, by the way.”

  “Rod, the bus driver, and,” he motioned toward Travis, “this is my friend Travis.”

  Travis used his thousand-watt smile on Shanda, stepping forward to shake her hand.

  “Travis is the one I fight fires with in the summer.” Although he wouldn’t be doing much of that soon, or maybe ever again. Rod’s comment seemed to break the ice for the kids, and they swarmed closer to the bed, full of questions, wanting to know what had happened, did he have a bionic leg now, could they see it? Was it cool fighting fires? Did they get to wear the same kind of fire gear as regular firefighters? Rod had forgotten how inquisitive they all were.

  When would he be driving the school bus again, they asked. The substitute driver was not nearly as cool and fun. Were they going to be able to finish the story they had started, because they had ideas about what should happen next.

  Travis hung back from the group, watching as the kids peppered Rod with questions. Eventually Sydney, the quietest of the three, pointed at him and whispered, “You’re Mr. Beton’s friend?”

  Sydney’s question seemed to snap Travis from some sort of reverie; he shook his head and brought his focus back to the room. Rod wondered what he’d been thinking about.

  Travis stuck out his hand for Sydney to shake. “Yep, Travis Walker. I’ve known Rod a long time, since I was your age. What’s your name?”

  Sydney eyed him with suspicion. “Mr. Beton is our school bus driver.” Rod chuckled at Sydney’s rebuke of Travis’s familiarity.

  Travis nodded, crouching so he and Sydney were eye to eye. “Is he a good bus driver?”

  “Yes, he always waits for kids if they’re late. And he helps us write stories. My name is Sydney.” Sydney had a slight lisp that made his s’s breathy. Apparently satisfied with Travis, Sydney joined back in the conversation Maurice and Vincent were having about the fate of the space-adventuring amphibians Rod and the bus riders were “writing.”

  Shanda stood at the back of the room watching the kids interact with Rod, all of them careful of his leg and steering clear of the end of the bed. Someone, probably the nurse, had warned them about his injuries, so while they asked a few questions, they didn’t focus on them except to ask if he was going to be okay. He was glad the worst of the bruising had faded. They stayed until Maurice started to get antsy.

  Shanda took her son by the hand, had the kids say goodbye, and led everyone out of the room. They tried to linger, but eventually they all followed Shanda out and down the hallway. Rod could hear them chattering and Shanda offering ice cream on the way home. The room was empty without them.

  Somewhere around the middle of the kids’ visit Travis had snuck out, avoiding the conversation that Rod was determined to have with him. But the interaction had tired him more than he expected, and with the room finally empty he found his eyes drifting shut with the TV still playing in the background. He’d have the conversation with Travis in due time; he wouldn’t be able to avoid it for long. A last thought flitted through his mind before he fell asleep: where was Jasper? If an offer to visit Mr. Beton had been made, he knew Jasper would have come if he could.

  10

  Travis had reserved the closest hotel room to the hospital he could find. It was boring, but it had the necessities: a bed, and a TV for white noise when he slept. He hadn’t been entirely truthful with Rod when he’d claimed he had everything under control, and the evidence of the wobble in his plans was unmistakable as his phone continued to blow up.

  Lenore’s messages had filled up his voice mail. Travis finally stopped deleting them so she couldn’t leave any more, because he was tired of hearing her rant at him. Her voice was full of rage and hate and vitriol he’d never imagined she harbored. The messages were all the same, berating Travis for leaving Walla Walla, for still being gone, for his friendship with Rod, for disappointing her, for… well, it sure seemed like there wasn’t much about Travis’s life Lenore didn’t have an opinion about.

  He talked to his dad every day through Skype. His dad was terrible with computer stuff, but Abigail had taught him how to video chat. Michael wanted updates on Rod, and Travis needed to stay updated on what was happening with the spring planting. He hadn’t told Michael about the messages Lenore was leaving, and it turned out he didn’t have to.

  Travis felt terrible—like a traitor—for not being home this time of year. It was the time when they would be able to assess how well the wheat did over the winter and they’d be getting ready to sow, but he couldn’t leave Skagit now. He knew if he left, the slim chance he had at fixing things between him and Rod would vanish.

  Wrong time to run away from home. Although home, it seemed, wasn’t as set in stone as he’d thought.

  Travis was in the elevator when his phone buzzed; luckily it was his dad’s number.

  “Dad, I’m sorry,” Travis began. It seemed like he started every conversation these days with an apology.

  His dad interrupted him. “I said don’t worry about it, son, and I meant it. You do what you need to do. I’ll take care of things here. We have a good staff.”

  They did have a good staff, but it was still wrong of him not to be there helping out. The elevator doors slid open and Travis stepped out, slowly making his way down the long hallway to his room.

  Michael cleared his throat. “I’m sorry for what Lenore has put you through. I found her phone last night; that text was wrong.”

  Travis wanted to ask which one. The sheer number of increasingly horrible texts from his mother was hard to get his head around. “Dad—”

  Michael took a breath and continued speaking before Travis could think of anything to say. “Church has always bored me, but I’ve read the Gospels, and nowhere does it say anything about gay people being sinners or wrong. What’s wrong is being so full of hate that it spills over onto other people. Into your family. You are my son, and I love you unconditionally, same as I love your sister. Try not to worry about your mother.” Another deep breath. “We’re having some hard conversations. Just know that I support you and whatever you choose.”

  Travis stared at the door, room number 235. He shook his head, reaching into his back pocket for the room key. His dad had just told him everything would be all right, and Travis believed him.

  “I love you too, Dad.” Words Travis probably hadn’t said since he was eight. Far too long.

  Travis slid the key card across the reader and the door lights blinked green. As he pushed the door open, he considered that for all the wild childhood escapade
s he’d gotten up to—mostly with Rod—he’d never been on the receiving end of his mom’s vitriol before. That had always been Abigail.

  He'd been tempted but decided against blocking his mom’s phone number. He’d been holding on to a scrap of hope that she would stop, come to her senses, but that hope was fading. It was just about time for another call. Blocking her felt like cheating; he had disappointed her, and he deserved her anger. It seemed better to give her an outlet than to ignore the situation.

  He tossed his keys on the counter next to the tiny coffeepot and collapsed onto the too-soft mattress. The maid had been in earlier, so the room was tidy and the bed made, not that Travis had been spending much time there. Yesterday he’d signed the lease for the house Cameron had helped him find. He couldn’t wait; he wanted Rod out of the hospital and home so they could start moving forward. So Travis could see if he would be able to make things right.

  God, he needed to talk to Abigail. But what he really wanted to do was crawl under the covers and pull them over his head for a while. Until he managed to straighten his life out. He was walking a razor’s edge between happiness, because he could almost see the future he imagined for Rod and himself, and despair, because he still had so many things to sort out. Not the least of which was what he was going to do in Skagit. Or about his mother.

  His phone vibrated. He glanced at it, the words not fully making sense in the truncated preview screen, but he got the gist.

  “Fucking fuck,” he muttered to the empty room.

  After reading the text from his mother, Travis shut his eyes. He had no idea what it meant. He didn’t think his dad would tell her where he was staying or give out any information about Rod. Travis was worried about Michael; his parents may not have had an overtly happy relationship, but he didn’t think his dad had been unhappy. Now? Travis didn’t know. Just another thing to feel guilty about.

  He didn’t intend to fall asleep; it was only late afternoon, but somehow he found himself slipping into memories of him and Rod some time in high school.

  They been up to no good, as usual, and—as usual—it was Travis’s idea. Rod was along not because he thought the plan was great but because he “figured somebody needed to be around to call 911.” Travis recalled with clarity the sarcasm dripping from Rod’s voice.

  There was nothing like most of a fifth of Travis’s friend Jack D. for coming up with great ideas.

  “We can’t go to the ocean, so we’ll bring the ocean to us!”

  It was mid-August. Harvest was mostly over, and everyone was tired of the incessant heat. The crew they hung out with had already hit every possible legal thing to do in a small town over the summer, and plenty of illegal ones too. They’d even checked out the water park in the next town over, but it was only a swimming pool on steroids. Travis was hot, and damn, he wanted to see the ocean.

  “Trav, I don’t know.” Rod hadn’t hit his growth spurt yet; at sixteen he was just hitting five foot five and scrawny. Most of them were still on the small side. Not Travis, though. He’d shot up four inches since January, and he’d been throwing hay around all summer, packing on more muscle.

  “What could go wrong?” Somewhere in the back of his head a little voice was reciting a long list of things that could go wrong, but he was choosing to ignore it. The buzz of grasshoppers and clicks of other bugs in the tall grass along the parking lot where they were hanging out finishing that bottle of Jack were like a chant egging Travis on.

  He wanted to see the ocean, but his parents never wanted to go anywhere fun. Family vacations were always back to Missouri or some other flat, boring state where all they did was chase fireflies and count bug bites. Last year Abigail had vomited in the car on the first day, making the trip a living nightmare. They were leaving for the hated family trip tomorrow, and Travis had threatened her within an inch of her life if something like that happened this year.

  “I’ll stand on the truck, and you’ll drive real slow—”

  “I am not driving. No way.” Rod was shaking his head. His dark hair had grown out over the summer, and it was kind of curly, something Travis had never noticed before. He blinked, wondering where the thought had come from.

  “Fine.” Travis turned to Chad. “You drive. Slowly speed up while I stand on the cab.”

  He’d been bored out of his mind surfing the internet the week before when he’d found this gem. He’d been on his own because Rod’s parents had dragged him off on some kind of weird family trip for almost two weeks. Weird because Rod’s family never went anywhere.

  Of course he’d had to watch a video showing this guy surfing on his car. Travis knew he could do it way better than the guy in the video—who’d fallen off and, man, did that look like it hurt. There were some nut jobs who did it at high speed on the freeway. Travis wasn’t going to be going that fast, just enough to feel a breeze across his skin and pretend he was floating in the ocean.

  When he opened his eyes, Rod was leaning over him, dark eyes full of fury battling with concern. Travis was having trouble pulling air into his lungs, and things were generally a bit fuzzy.

  “What happened?” he wheezed. Fuck, that hurt. Almost as bad as when he’d been tackled during a game by the kid from Waitsburg who was built like a Mack truck.

  “Chad hit the fucking gas pedal, and you slammed into the bed of the truck! God, you are such an asshole!”

  “Why am I the asshole?” All Travis knew was that he could hardly breathe and the back of his head throbbed from where he’d hit the bed of the pickup. Sitting up, he put a hand to the back of his head. He could feel a bump but no blood.

  Rod crouched over him, the late afternoon sunshine a halo behind his head. “What day is it?”

  “What?”

  “What fucking day is it?” Rod’s expression was grim. Travis would have laughed if he had any air left in his lungs.

  “Jeez, it’s Thursday. My name is Travis Walker. I’ve seen this movie, Nurse Nancy.”

  Rod punched him in the arm before hopping out of the back of the truck and stomping over to the edge of the grass.

  All the other guys had vanished, except for Chad, who looked edgy as heck. “Are you all right, man? I think I gotta get going.”

  Travis crawled out of the truck, landing on his ass in the dirt. Chad didn’t even ask if Travis needed a ride. Chad gunned the engine, then raced off, a cloud of dust billowing in his wake. Travis half expected Rod to leave too. He didn’t. He was mad as hell, but he drove Travis home and even stayed up with him to make sure he didn’t fall asleep and not wake up, because Rod had seen that movie too.

  When Travis woke up forty-five minutes later, he was groggy and disoriented. And he still had no idea how to stop his mother from coming to Skagit to “talk some sense into” him.

  11

  The next morning, even though he’d awakened to the news he was officially cleared to go home, Rod was in a foul humor. He didn’t even want to be around himself. He’d spent all night thinking about what Travis had said about renting a house and fantasizing about what their lives together would be like. Having Travis say those words made the fantasy more elaborate, which made Rod angry.

  A house? Talking to his landlord? The hell. What the fucking hell? Rod couldn’t afford an entire house on his own. Maybe a room in a house—or a tiny house like the kind featured on home improvement shows. Not a real house; that kind of expense would blow through his savings.

  Unless Travis was planning on staying.

  No, he couldn’t think that.

  Rod forced the thought into a deep, dark box in his head. That path led nowhere good. His stomach got all weird and fluttery, and not in a way he could blame on the medications he’d been forced to take, so he pushed the thought to the back of his mind where it belonged.

  Travis couldn’t stay in Skagit. He had his life all set for him in Walla Walla. Landowner and wheat farmer, with more money than god. The golden boy, born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He’d never had to work for
anything; it had all been handed to him. He’d grown up knowing he would never have to worry about where he lived or if he had a job. The Walker empire awaited him.

  Rod knew he was being unfair, and that made him even more irritable. Travis didn’t care that he’d come from more money than Rod. He never brought it up at all. Even in college when it could have really been a big deal, Travis never did anything that Rod couldn’t afford.

  Maybe it was Rod who had the problem.

  Shit. He shut his eyes for a second, letting the thought settle in his brain.

  He’d never thought about that before, not really. Was he envious of Travis’s money? It wasn’t as if Travis flaunted it. Hell, when Rod had decided to try firefighting, Travis had signed his contract at the same time. He certainly didn’t need the money, as his college education had been fully paid for.

  God, he was a dick.

  He scooted over to the side of the hospital bed and very carefully swung his legs over. There was a soft cast on his left leg, extending from the top of his thigh to his toes. He supposed he should count himself lucky that he wasn’t encased in plaster, although maybe they didn’t do that kind of thing these days. He didn’t feel lucky right now; he felt like throwing something.

  A knock on his door interrupted his bad temper. Rod called out for whoever it was to come in, and Cameron poked his head into the room, a big, irritating smile on his handsome face.

  “You decent?”

  “No, but modesty isn’t something well-guarded in this place. I don’t think there’s a part of my body that hasn’t been on public display at this point.”

  “Want some help getting dressed?” Cam sauntered in, shutting the door behind him.

  Did he want help? No. Did he need it? Yes.