The Road to Amazing

by Brent Hartinger

  But even as he spoke, I sat upright again. Something else had occurred to me.

  "Now what?" Kevin said.

  "Did you send an email or text to our guests?" I said. "The people waiting in line at the ferry? Did you tell them we were canceling the wedding?"

  "No, I turned off my phone."

  "Oh, geez, I did too!" I fumbled for my pants, searching for my phone. "Everyone's probably so pissed off at us right now."

  Kevin turned for his pants too. "Yeah, we need to tell them what's going on."

  I turned on my phone, and a bunch of old texts popped up one after the other.

  Yup, I thought, scanning them all. People are annoyed.

  The last text was from Gunnar.

  The wedding's back on! it read. But don't do anything until I get back.

  I showed the text to Kevin.

  "What is he talking about?" he asked.

  I looked out at the water, which was much calmer now. "Maybe the ferry's running again. But even if it is, there's still the back-up. And it's too late." I looked at the clock: it was almost four o'clock. "Even with the ferry and Uber, it would take hours for everyone to get here now."

  "You're right," Kevin said, but we both started pulling on our clothes anyway.

  Once I was dressed, I texted Gunnar back, but of course he didn't answer.

  Kevin and I climbed down the promontory, then hurried back up the road to the house. Gunnar's car wasn't in the parking lot, but the other cars were, so it wasn't like they'd all gone to pick people up at the ferry terminal.

  The inside of the house felt like the waiting room at a train station, with people leaning against counters and sagging into chairs, but somehow everyone seeming impatient at the same time.

  The second Kevin and I stepped inside, everyone perked up again.

  "There you are!" Min said. "Where did you guys go?"

  I couldn't think of a good answer to that question, so I ignored her. "What's going on?" I said. "I just got a text from Gunnar that said the wedding is back on."

  "We got the same text," Otto said. "We don't know anything more than you."

  I texted Gunnar again. Where are you? I wrote.

  This time he did write back.

  Almost there! he said.

  I started texting him again, but then I noticed something out of the corner of my eye — more boats in the channel off-shore. At first I didn't really think anything about them. It made sense there'd be more boats out now that the storm had stopped.

  They all seemed to be heading in the same direction — toward the beach below the Amazing Inn.

  I turned and took a closer look.

  "She'll be apples now," Nate said, standing next to me. He'd seen the boats too, even if (as usual) I didn't have any idea what his Australian slang meant.

  Without a word, we all stepped out onto the deck for a better view. Three boats sailed toward us, all different sizes, none of them huge. One looked like a fishing boat, one was a small yacht, and the third was just a regular motorboat.

  People crammed their decks. A bald man who looked a lot like my dad gripped the railing of the yacht. And it almost looked like my Aunt Helen standing next to him, wearing one of her trademark purple dresses.

  Gunnar stood at the bow of the fishing boat. I heard him shouting to the other boats, like he was guiding them all closer to shore.

  "What did he do?" I asked Min, who stood on the other side of me.

  But of course Min didn't have any answers for me.

  We all thundered down the stairs to the beach to meet Gunnar and his own Mosquito Fleet. The yacht and the fishing boat were too big to land without a dock, so Gunnar was using the motorboat as a dingy, ferrying the passengers from the other boats to shore.

  There were already people on the beach when we got there — my cousins Ann, Jan, and Jane, and a couple that had lived next to my parents' house when I was growing up.

  Right then, the motorboat was landing again, and Gunnar hopped out to help people down without getting their feet wet.

  One of them was my mom, who turned around and saw me. "Russel!" she said. She stepped forward to hug me. "I was so worried we weren't going to make it. But Gunnar saved everything!"

  Meanwhile, my dad shook Kevin's hand. "Congratulations, boys," he said.

  I was literally speechless. I kept watching people climb down out of the boat, even as I spotted other faces on the two boats still farther out in the water — more relatives and family friends, and Kevin's mom and dad too.

  Finally, I stepped closer to Gunnar. "How did you do this?" I asked him.

  He smiled at me. "I'll tell you later," he said, then turned to continue directing the guests in from the boats.

  Truthfully, it wasn't everyone who had planned to come to our wedding. Sixty-one people had RSVPed (in addition to the six people who were spending the weekend with us). Gunnar looked like he'd rounded up about thirty of them. Maybe he wasn't able to track down contact info for a lot of them, or maybe some people had already left the line at the ferry once they saw it was closed.

  But now I'm nitpicking. The truth is, in a weekend full of them, Gunnar had managed to pull off the movie moment to end all movie moments.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The weather was still good, so we decided to hold the wedding out on the deck after all. Nate, Ruby, Gunnar, and Otto immediately went to work like little house elves, sweeping up the needles and branches, then positioning chairs from inside to go along with the chairs and benches already out there. When they finished, people somehow instinctively knew to take their seats (possibly because we were already running an hour and a half behind schedule, and everyone was, like, "Get on with it already!").

  Inside the house, Min, Kevin, and I watched as the last few people sat down. We'd all cleaned up a bit, but Kevin and I weren't wearing tuxes, just nice pants and button-down shirts, and it's not like Min was wearing a robe or anything.

  Finally, Min turned to us and asked, "Ready?"

  We both took deep breaths, then nodded.

  Together, the three of us walked out and stood in front of everyone, with the backdrop of Puget Sound off on the right. Out in the distance, the rays of the sun shone down through the clouds like stalks of golden straw.

  Hey! I thought. I was right about the weather after all! But I was smart enough to know that five minutes before marrying someone is probably not the best time to rub their nose in how you were right and they were wrong about something.

  Otto was already sitting in front of the gathering with his guitar. Right on cue — even though we hadn't given him a cue — he started playing and singing.

  This time and place I'm here to say I love you

  This time and place is all that we can know

  This time and place we stand together face to face

  I live within your eyes this time and place

  As I listened to Otto sing, I remembered how impressed I'd been by his musical talent all those years ago at summer camp. But honestly, when I'd asked him to sing at our wedding, I'd forgotten how good he was. It was funny how one of the first things I'd noticed about him was that he was a natural-born performer, and now, nine years later, he was a famous actor.

  Some people say the past is like a river

  That sweeps us forth into who we're supposed to be

  But as for me, the past is gone forever

  So don't come talkin' to me 'bout destiny

  I didn't recognize the song Otto was singing. Then I remembered he was a songwriter too, and I realized he must have written the song for us, for our wedding.

  Other people say our future's in the heavens

  And the stars converge into some grand design

  But as for me, I don't need no lucky sevens

  And I don't need spinning moons to make up my mind

  As Otto sang, I looked out at the faces of the crowd — Nate and Ruby, sitting together, and Gunnar, grinning like he'd just discovered a new animal phylum. Ver
nie was seated with an older man, someone it took me a second to place: Walker, the guy Min and I had met in the ruins of Amazing the day before. Did she have a date or what?

  Leave the past alone

  Let the future be

  'Cause this time and place

  You're here with me

  This time and place I'm here to say I love you

  This time and place is all that we can know

  This time and place we stand together face to face

  I live within your eyes this time and place

  I'm really glad we're here ... this time and place

  When Otto finished, I could tell people were impressed with him, and probably also flattered that a TV star had deigned to sing for them. I wanted people to applaud, but it was a wedding, so no one did.

  Min stepped forward. "Welcome to the wedding of Kevin and Russel," she said. "My name is Min, and we're happy you finally made it. You all passed the test!"

  Everyone laughed — really laughed — and I realized that picking Min to be our officiant had been another great call on Kevin's and my part.

  "My mother is annoyingly wise," Min said to the crowd. "And when I was eleven years old, I asked her what it means to be married. She thought for a second, then called into the other room and asked if my father would bring her magazine into the kitchen for her. A second later, my father trundled into the room with her magazine, kissed her on the top of the head, then left again. When he was gone, I said to my mom, 'Well?' 'Well, what?' my mother said as she casually paged through her magazine. 'I asked you a question about marriage,' I said, 'but you didn't answer it!' And she said, 'Oh, I answered it.'"

  The crowd was one collective knowing grin.

  "I thought about what my mother had done, the point she was trying to make," Min said. "Finally I asked her, 'But what if he'd told you to get your own darn magazine? What if he'd stomped into the kitchen with a scowl and thrown the magazine down onto the table?' And of course my mom smiled and said, 'That would have been what it means to be married too.'"

  Now everyone on that deck laughed, including me.

  "So Kevin and Russel?" Min said, turning to us. "I'm sure you both already know that no marriage is perfect. But my wedding wish for you is that you have very little scowling and magazine-throwing, but lots and lots of head-kissing."

  I smiled at her, then at Kevin too. Min wasn't a touchy-feely type, but she sure knew how to rock a wedding anecdote (even Vernie looked impressed). It was interesting how, after everything that could possibly go wrong with our wedding had gone wrong, now everything was suddenly going right. But I guess there's some kind of lesson there, something about how we spend most of our lives getting all bent out of shape about things that don't matter in the least.

  Min faced the crowd again and said, "Russel and Kevin have both written their own wedding vows."

  We have? I thought. This was what I'd told Min weeks ago, and I'd even jotted a few things down somewhere. I'd been planning to finalize my vows over the weekend, but I'd been so distracted by everything that had gone on that I'd forgotten all about it. It's not like we'd thought to do a rehearsal. As a result, I had no idea what I was going to say.

  I looked out at the crowd again, hoping to be filled with inspiration. But whereas before I'd seen the smiling faces of Gunnar and Vernie, now I saw the mugs of everyone else: my parents, my uncle Joe, and Mr. Ingram, one of my dad's co-workers. They were smiling too — well, Mr. Ingram wasn't, and he even looked down at his watch — but it wasn't the same. Even if her mouth was curved upward, my mom had a nervous twitch. Meanwhile, my dad was smiling too broadly. Maybe it was the gay thing. Had my Aunt Helen ever been to a same-sex wedding? Had she ever seen two men kiss, even on TV? Maybe she had, but none of these people had ever seen me kiss Kevin, not even my parents.

  So much for everything going right in the ceremony, I thought.

  Kevin must have seen the panic in my eyes, because he immediately pulled out a three-by-five card, indicating that he'd go first. As nervous as I was, I couldn't help noticing how damn handsome he looked in his button-down shirt, and how he had such gentle eyes. But before he even glanced at his prepared card, Kevin lowered it. He was going off-book too.

  "Russel," he said, "all weekend long I've been worried that something would go wrong at our wedding, and you told me not to worry. Well, everything went wrong. So basically I was right and you were wrong."

  People laughed, and I thought, So much for not rubbing your groom's nose in his mistakes in the middle of a wedding! But at the same time, I was pretty sure he was going somewhere with this.

  "Except I wasn't right," Kevin went on, "because this wedding is perfect exactly the way it is. The only way our wedding wouldn't be perfect is if it didn't happen. And now that it's happening, I have a chance to tell you how much I love you, and how much I want to spend my life with you. Earlier today, you said you wanted an amazing life. This is my vow to you: I promise to do everything in my power to give you one."

  What Kevin had said was really sweet, and he still looked damn handsome, so I smiled. Unfortunately, I still had no idea what I was going to say in return — despite the fact that every single person on the deck was now staring at me, including Kevin.

  I thought about the conversations Min and I had been having this weekend, and the talk that Kevin and I had over in Amazing. What had all that been about? Something about getting older? No, wait, maybe it had to do with kids. Or House Hunters? Suddenly I couldn't remember.

  I've said all along that my concerns about the wedding were just little quibbles, barely worth mentioning — nothing neurotic, and definitely not anything approaching cold feet. But even I didn't know that for sure. Maybe I'd been lying to myself.

  Now I did know for sure.

  I guess my view of weddings had changed one more time: it wasn't about us saying anything to our friends and family, or our friends and family saying something to us. It was about that moment when I realized — finally and for sure — exactly what I felt for Kevin, and what he and I meant to each other.

  Or — and maybe this is the real truth — our wedding was about all these things together, all of them at the same time.

  Given how I was having this moment of clarity, and given that the wedding had all seemed to come together at the last moment — the sun came out! Gunnar arrived with the guests! Min's wedding anecdote was hilarious! — I expected to open my mouth and have the perfect words flow right out of me.

  But I still couldn't figure out how to put it all into words.

  So instead, I leaned forward and gave Kevin a kiss on the head. Then I said, "Here's my vow: a lifetime of that."

  It was only after I did it I realized that for a person who had a tendency to over-think things, it actually was the perfect thing to say.

  Appreciating the nod to her story, Min immediately perked up. "Hey, that works for me!"

  "Me too," Kevin said, his smiling face somehow even more handsome than before.

  "And so," Min went on, "by the power invested in me not by God or government, but by Kevin and Russel themselves, I now pronounce you married." She looked between us, then winked and added, "Go to it, boys."

  Kevin and I leaned in for a kiss, deep and lingering, my Aunt Helen be damned.

  At that, Min held her arms out around us and said to the gathering, "I now present two husbands, Kevin Land and Russel Middlebrook!"

  As if there was ever any doubt. I told you at the beginning I was a reliable narrator. It was your own damn fault if you didn't believe me.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  After the ceremony, Kevin and I talked to our parents first, mostly due to the whole having-given-birth-to-us thing. They said all the right things, and I was actually glad they'd come. We mingled with the other guests too. My Aunt Helen couldn't wait to kiss me on the cheek — and she had actual tears in her eyes. How great is that?

  While Kevin and I accepted the congratulations of the crowd, our close friends went into
house elf mode again, pouring drinks and ushering everyone into the area with the food spread.

  At one point, I passed Nate who was popping another bottle of champagne.

  He stopped me to say, "That was really great. Especially the kiss on the head. I think this might be the best wedding I've ever been to."

  "Really?" I said, blushing, even as I realized it was one of the first things Nate had said all weekend that I'd understood perfectly right from the start.

  * * *

  Not long after, I pulled Otto aside, and I was about to tell him how great his song had been, but he spoke first.

  "That was fantastic!" he said. "Russel, I'm so happy for you. Seriously, I spent the whole ceremony with this stupid grin on my face. Thanks so much for inviting me."

  "Are you kidding?" I said. "You had to be here." I wanted to say more, to tell him how important he was to me, but once again I couldn't find the right words. After all, Otto was my ex, and in certain alternate realities, I could see marrying him and not Kevin. In fact, I almost said to him, "I hope you know you're going to be married someday too," but I quickly realized how condescending that sounded. Besides, I hated when a person had some life event, a marriage or a childbirth, and they suddenly acted like the universe had bestowed this great wisdom onto them.

  "Oh! I loved your song!" I said, remembering. "You wrote it, didn't you? I'm so flattered."

  His face brightened. "You really liked it?"

  "Oh, yeah."

  He nodded. "Yeah, Lady Gaga liked it a lot too."

  "You played your song for—?" I started to say, but then I saw the expression on his face. He was bullshitting me, so I swatted him on the arm. (At least I think he was bullshitting me. Maybe he'd told the truth, but decided he didn't want to make me feel bad on my wedding day.)