by Kris Ripper
I didn’t deserve a friend who’d take me home and put me to bed even when I was pissdrunk and hitting on them. But maybe Hugh was right. Maybe Miguel and I deserved each other because we’d chosen to be friends.
It’s always so annoying when really obnoxious people are right.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I MANAGED ONE of my more impressive hangover turn-arounds that day. I crashed for two hours when I got home—longer than I should have, but I needed the reset—then took a scorching shower with a cold rinse to fully wake up. I’d meant to take off the necklace Jamie had made for me, but in the end, staring into the mirror, I couldn’t do it. If I tried, I could still feel her fingers on my neck, knotting it together. I didn’t want to undo that.
Despite a throbbing headache, I managed to arrange myself in my suit and pick up Jamie and Alex perfectly on time.
Jamie took one look at me and said, “Yeah, no. You need a banana. And coffee.”
Right, coffee. That’s why my head hurt so badly. Well, that, and the hangover. “I had a busy morning.”
“Get in the back with Alex. I’ll chauffeur you through a Starbucks.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Does it have to be—”
“We have to hit a drive-through, yes. Weddings wait for no hangover, Jus.” She opened the back door and gestured. “Go on.”
It took a bit of careful maneuvering to get in without my stomach flipping upside down again, though I couldn’t say for sure it was the hangover causing that or proximity to Alex.
“You look like hell,” he said. Smiling.
“Shut up.” Then I did a double take. “Holy crap, that dress. You look amazing.” Jamie made various noises of mockery in the front seat, but I ignored her. “You really…you look…”
He held out his hand. “Thanks.”
The dress was high-necked velvet in a deep blue that looked purple where shadows fell across it. Buttons all down the front, long sleeves that didn’t quite bell out, but expanded a bit at the wrists. The hem fell right above his knees, and beneath it he wore tight black jeans.
I fiddled with the cuff of it while he held my hand. “Where did you find this? It’s so…you.”
“Thrift store, where else?”
“Oi! Alex isn’t the only one in a fetching frock, you arse!”
“Oh great, she’s calling me an arse. This day’s starting well. I’m sure you look very nice, Cork.” Except when I leaned between the front seats to say something vague, I couldn’t. “Jesus, I can’t believe you two just walked to my car like this and I didn’t even notice. Fuck me.”
“That can be arranged,” she said. Every time she hit the clutch her dress rode up higher.
I leaned back again and closed my eyes. Jamie had gone for emerald green, tight up top, flowing skirt below. Also long-sleeved. With a somewhat significant v-neck. Not inappropriate for a midday wedding by any means, despite the thoughts it inspired. “If my head was pounding less, I’d totally be leering at your cleavage right now, Cork. I just want you to know. It isn’t that I’m not impressed.”
“Sure, sure. That’s what all the boys say.”
But it wasn’t enough to poke fun, not today. I kept my eyes closed. “Both of you look completely breathtaking. I’m sorry I missed the opportunity to watch you walk down the street.”
“Aw, lad, you’ll see it again shortly. Let’s get some caffeine into you and you’ll feel better.”
Which was probably true in a sense, but was also not quite accurate.
Alex patted my leg. “C’mere. Rest for a minute.”
It wasn’t sex. It wasn’t kink. It was barely touching. I slid down in the back seat and laid my head in his lap, over his velvet dress, assuring myself that this was inside the revised rules. The ones that would keep us safe.
The ones that would keep me safe.
His fingers carded through my hair. “I’ll fix this when we get to where we’re going. Just relax, okay?”
So I did. I floated there in the shifting shades of darkness as Jamie drove. She ordered three coffees, but no one poked me to get up, so I didn’t. I listened to their voices and welcomed the sun hitting my jacket. And Alex kept playing with my hair, gently, sweetly. Like I was a person who inspired sweetness, or gentleness.
I pushed thinking aside and focused on the feel of his fingers, the sweeping rhythm of them, the smoothness of the velvet below my cheek, the heat of Alex’s thigh beneath that.
We got to the wedding with just enough time for me to suck down most of my coffee. They didn’t make fun of me for curling in to Alex like a cat as I was almost worried they would. But I was the one who got uncomfortable and cracked jokes; they’d always been able to just accept.
Dammit. I was thinking again. I straightened my shoulders and held out my arms. “May I escort you both?”
Jamie laughed and did a little twirl, making her dress fly up. “You certainly can.”
Alex bowed.
They took my arms and off we went.
* * *
Avery grabbed us the second we got to the…wedding area. The whole thing was outside (the fog had burned off early and left a gorgeous spring day, all green leaves and blue sky), in some kind of park. Or a clearing in a park, set up with folding chairs and ribbons. We passed a bundled mass of canvas I assumed would have been an overhang in the event of bad weather. They’d elected to have the ceremony on grass with sturdy temporary walkways, but the reception was on solid ground. A distant tent presumably held a buffet and an open bar.
Avery’s delighted babble was too much this early in the…afternoon. God, there better be an open bar.
“Come sit with us! You must be Jamie and Alex, I’m like so excited to meet you, Justin talks about you constantly.”
“You are a liar and a scoundrel,” I muttered. “Anyway, this is Avery. Avery, Jamie, Alex. And you know, what if I’d brought someone else? That could have been awkward.”
“You would never bring anyone else, silly! Come on!”
The us in question was, of course, our little cadre of workshop graduates, otherwise known as my friends, who whispered greetings as we took seats in the same row.
“You and I have to talk later,” Madison whispered loudly to Jamie.
“Oh, bet on it. That crop.”
I cleared my throat for an extended period of time and ignored their significant looks at each other.
Jesus, this was the dumbest idea I’d probably ever had, combining parts of my life like this. I glanced around suspiciously, almost certain that the fates had seen fit to throw Chad into this natural disaster, but thankfully there was no sign of him.
What would Enrico Hazeltine have thought of this wedding? A queer man marrying a straight woman, cheered by our entire row of queers, to say nothing of the gay brother and his husband, and a few other pockets of people who seemed blatantly family. Would Hazeltine have cheered, too? Or seen this kind of thing as assimilation, to be fought at all costs?
I couldn’t decide. The times were too different. The stakes had been life or death for so long: coming out and risking all sorts of hell, or living closeted in a hell all your own. And then actually physically wasting away, for that dark stretch in the eighties and early nineties, when we’d lost so many. Including Hazeltine.
This same group of people, thirty years before, would have been decimated. Did making this kind of lifelong commitment matter more, or less, if you were faced with those kinds of odds? Hazeltine had clung to his people grimly, even when he’d found it easier in some ways to be isolated, to not face the living when he was dying. I didn’t understand it when I’d read him as a teenager, but I saw that courage for what it was now.
It was a terrible risk, exposing yourself to people when you weren’t quite whole. I sat under a beautiful clear sky listening to the vows of the bride (looking stunning in a pale pink dress) and groom (looking dapper as hell in a suit with a pink bow tie, his wheels decorated with pink ribbons). Thinking about commitment and permane
nce and life and death. And time. Maybe time more than anything else.
If I teared up, it had nothing to do with the wedding itself. Not really. It was everything all at once. Sitting there between the people I loved most, watching two people in love get married.
Well okay, maybe it had a little to do with the wedding.
“Sure and that was gorgeous,” Jamie whispered, far more Cork than California.
“I’m crying and I don’t even know them,” Alex whispered back.
Then Paul swept Ally into his arms, kissing her in a manner I felt certain was probably making both sets of parents turn away, and settled her on his lap as he rolled along the wooden path down the center of the chairs.
“We’re gonna go get changed!” he called. “Let the party begin!”
I snapped, like I’d just had a revelation. “Well shit. We could have brought jeans.”
“Speak for yourself. I’m dancing all night with your man in that dress.”
Madison leaned around Miguel. “Seriously, both of those dresses are fucking hot. Where’d you get them?”
Alex and Jamie chorused, “Goodwill.”
“Ha. Awesome.” She looked around. “Time to decamp?”
Miguel shook his head. “I vote we hang out for a minute and let the super anxious people clear out first. Plus, we can use this time to get to know Alex and Jamie, right?”
I groaned. “I think we should hurry up and get over there. What if—god forbid—we don’t get a table together.” I pulled my lips down in an exaggerated frown. “That would be tragic.”
Avery laughed. “Oh, poor you. We went over early and put all of our names on a table already. You’re stuck with us!”
Worst. News. Ever.
“Alex and I are delighted to finally meet you guys.” Jamie took advantage of the seats clearing out and turned around a chair in the row in front of ours so she could better chat with my friends. “Jus never knows people longer than five minutes unless he’s getting paid. You loom large in our mythology.”
“Oh my god, I think I love you.” Avery elbowed Madison. “We loom large in Justin’s mythology. We are so badass.”
“I do not have a—”
“He never stops moping about you two.” Miguel smiled, eyes glittering in a way I didn’t trust at all. “In fact, just last night—”
I lunged for him, he dodged, both of us ended up on the ground. In our suits.
“Mercy, mercy, mercy,” he sputtered, laughing and holding up his hands. “You’re so easy.”
Jamie tousled my hair. “That’s what we’re always telling him.”
“Shut it.”
Everyone laughed but me.
It was a near thing, but I think I hid it well.
Alex grinned and held out his hand. “I’m glad you made friends. I like them.” I would have responded to that with something biting and sarcastic, I’m sure, except he added, “There’s usually dancing at a wedding, right? Should we go find out?”
To me, he said this. In front of everyone. I don’t dance. Not like you mean. No. Not in public. Not to wedding music.
I swallowed and let him help me up. “Um. Okay.”
“Sweet.” He took my arm again and we led the way, with Madison and Jamie having god only knew what kind of unholy communion behind us. I found it hard to eavesdrop effectively because I was so busy thinking, Alex and I are walking arm and arm right now in search of a dance floor so we can dance. And his dress is amazing. I bet it would feel really hot to rub against. Also if he was hard, would I be able to tell? It’s not super tight, but it’s not super loose…
“I’m glad we’re here,” he murmured.
“I’m glad you’re here too.”
He squeezed my arm and didn’t say anything else.
* * *
They were brilliant and charming and sexy. The buffet lasted an hour, during which my friends all mingled. There were, of course, tables. And I was content to stay seated. But entirely true to Ally and Paul, their guests did a lot of standing in casual groups, plates in hand, chatting. I noticed Hugh was still seated, and a variety of older people at a table (the parents?), who appeared to be trading conversational gambits in a controlled, turn-taking way.
How awkward would it be to become in-laws? Randomly connected by your children, likely nothing in common. Horrors.
My eyes strayed back, again, to Alex and Jamie. Alex was sitting with Miguel and Paul and a young man who was almost certainly Paul’s brother, and the brothers were animatedly telling a story. Alex laughed, as I watched, and I was too far away to really hear him, but my brain supplied his laughter anyway.
I would have felt vaguely jealous before—wondering what made them so special they got to hear him laugh, see his eyes up close, enjoy his company. I didn’t feel that now. Not at all. I had to keep my lips in a line when they wanted to curve upward, watching Alex from across a tent.
Jamie was at the center of a knot of people, telling her own story, all gestures and expressions. She might have been doing a serious Irish accent; there was a certain way her mouth moved when she really put it on. As I watched, she called something over to Alex, who responded, and the two groups melded together. Ally found her way to Paul’s lap again. His brother teased another woman standing there. Avery pulled up a chair beside Paul and Ally. Jamie continued her story, this time with a larger audience.
God. They were so…extraordinary.
“Quit being pathetic and come hang out.”
I looked up. Madison. Busted by Madison staring at my friends and thinking about how amazing they were.
She sighed. “You look at them like a kid with his face pressed against the window of a candy store, like all the riches of the world are inside, but you can’t get through the door.”
“I—”
“Hush. Listen for a minute.” She sat down beside me, angling her chair so both of us were freakishly looking across the room, spectators in a sport no one else knew was occurring. “Can you just for a second stop acting like you’re on the outside? Because I’ve seen you on the inside, Justin. That night? You were in the fucking candy store.”
“And in this metaphor what I wanted was your crop? Think again, Maddy.”
She grinned. And I responded, involuntarily, mirror neurons making me grin too.
Dammit.
“The point is you were present. Right now you’re sitting here like everything on the other side of the tent may as well be in a different time zone, but it isn’t. They aren’t. They’re right there. Don’t you want to be right there with them?”
“It’s not that easy.”
She rolled her eyes. “No one fucking said it was! But it’s bound to be easier than torturing yourself.”
“I’m really good at torturing myself.”
“All that practice, right?” Madison leaned back, crossed her legs. She’d gone with pinstripes and suspenders, which looked damn good on her. “Can’t you even imagine it? If you stopped fighting for like five minutes and just let yourself do what you actually want to do.”
“For five minutes it would be…” I paused. “There aren’t words for those five minutes. But it could never last. I’m…I can’t make anything good last. They’d hate me by the end.” And all that still felt true. But even as I pictured it, it wavered, like the highway on a hot day. “I don’t know anymore. It feels dangerous to think about.”
“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “Exactly. My work here is done.”
“Wait, what? What the hell does that mean?”
“You’re in the candy store, babe. That’s why it feels dangerous. So—go get you some sweets.” She laughed at her own joke. “See what I did there?”
I grunted, hoping she caught my reproach.
The music started up and a ragged cheer came from the younger groups of chit chatters.
“Yes! Save me a dance, Jus! But start with your people.”
“I’m absolutely not—” dancing to this. But she was gone with a giggle and a
wave, heading toward the group, hands in the air, already dancing.
It was safest to stay in my seat and kill all the wine available (no open bar, alas, just a pointed two bottles per table). My legs felt heavy. I wanted to stay at the table.
But there they were, being absolutely magnificent. And I didn’t want to miss that.
I forced myself to stand, finished my current glass of wine, and trudged into the vast DMZ between safety and risk. In all likelihood, everything would go to hell. But tonight I could claim a few dances, tease Jamie, get Alex hard in his dress. And maybe that would be enough.
* * *
I’ve never been a huge dancer, but that afternoon…evening…night…we partied for hours. And danced for most of it. I danced with both bride and groom, with Miguel and Madison and Avery, and I even shared a dance with Hugh Reynolds, who was formal and stiff and made only polite small talk, but did manage to mention that he’d met Alex and Jamie.
“They seem lovely.”
It had felt like a compliment in a strange sense. I lowered my eyes, weirdly touched, and said, “They are.”
Then, thank fuck, our dance had ended.
But most of the time, I danced with them. Alex. Jamie. Sometimes both at once. Sometimes all of us in a disgusting mass of bodies, but they were always nearby.
When the music slowed down, signaling the end of the night, we gravitated toward one another.
I gestured between us. “This is awkward.”
“I don’t find it awkward in the least,” Jamie said, putting one arm around each of us.
“Me neither.” Alex repeated the maneuver, so I had no choice but to do the same.
“We look like we’re in a huddle before some kind of fancy dress team sport.”
“We look awesome. I feel awesome.” Jamie swayed, pulling us into a rhythm. “I’m buzzing and I haven’t had a damn thing to drink. I really like your friends, Jus.”
“We should stop calling them that.”
“It’s what they are.”
“But so are you, except I need better terms, to differentiate.”
Alex’s hand squeezed my shoulder. “I bet we can find some.”
