by Zoe Lee
So I kept talking, undeterred. “Once the divorce is finally done, let’s plan something. We could go to St. Pete’s, it’s a beach near Tampa. Or is it Sarasota? One or the other.”
“Turn right in a quarter mile,” Eliott’s directions app interrupted.
As he took the right, he said, “I’ve never been to Florida.”
“You’ll love it,” I assured him. “We’ll get you a stack of those gay romances disguised as magical realism fantasies you love, I can’t remember the author’s name. You can read and drink mojitos and I’ll bring adult coloring books and try to convince you to go snorkeling!”
“I’m sure I have enough vacation days,” was his only response.
He took his right hand off the wheel and I thought he was going to put it on my knee. But instead he put on music, some violently beautiful violin piece, just loud enough to discourage any more conversation. That made me confused, wondering what I’d said to cause that reaction. Was it the idea of taking a vacation together at some point in the future, potentially months or even a year away? Uneasy with the thought, I looked out the window.
Time crawled by painfully until we were in rural Illinois, turning into…
“A historic village?” I yelped, reading the sign.
“Yes,” Eliott said calmly. “It’s why I told you to dress warm, there’s no heating here.”
He parked and we climbed out, my head immediately craning left and right, until Eliott startled me by pressing a pair of gloves into my chest. “Oh. Thanks?” I said, more of a question than appreciation, but obediently pulled them on after I’d done up my coat.
Looking more like he was ready to tour the gardens at Versailles than a historical village, Eliott tipped his head towards the ticket office, beckoning me along with him.
He paid for our admission and carefully unfolded the map of the place after the salesperson handed it to him. “We’re going to start with a tour of the replicas of the log cabins, barn, carriage house, get food, and then watch some demonstrations of skills.”
“I’m ready to kick ass at surviving this,” I teased enthusiastically.
Unlike his response to all the teasing I’d done on the other two Boring Dates, this time, Eliott stiffened up, his shoulders lifting and hunching in a little bit. I put a hand on his stomach, intending to stop him from walking away so we could talk about it, but he brushed it aside and said a little curtly, “The tour starts in five minutes, I don’t want to be late.”
Taking a deep, pitiful breath, I trailed behind him begrudgingly.
Despite the wonderful experience at the ballet, and the pretty okay afternoon of fishing, the tour of a fake prairie town was as dull as a doornail. The tour guide was grave, as if he were working at a battleground or a war museum, instead of talking about how the land was farmed two hundred years ago. If I were going to be learning about prairie houses, I wanted to be on a tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie School, not out here.
Every time I peeked at Eliott, hoping to exchange smirks, he was deadly focused on the tour guide, arms crossed over his ribs, the look in his eyes hidden behind his aviators.
With nowhere to go and no desire to lose the bet, I gritted my teeth and stuck it out until the tour was over, then perked up when Eliott murmured, “How about lunch?”
“What is a prairie-themed lunch? Hot dogs called prairie dogs?”
“Why don’t we go find out.”
Now I was getting really pissed off, but there was nothing worse than having a fight and then having to sit in crappy, tense, claustrophobic silence on a long car ride back.
I barely noticed what we ate since it was about as good as movie theatre food, but the seating area was communal picnic tables. So I chatted with the family who sat next to us, asking the kids what they liked so far, and got three enthusiastic thumbs up from them about visiting the blacksmith. That idea actually perked me up and I grinned at them as I finished my fresh-squeezed lemonade, which was actually pretty amazing, if really tart.
“Can we go to the blacksmith?” I asked, offering Eliott a hopeful smile.
“Yes, it’s on the list. I want to show you the candlemaker and the wool spinning first though,” he said, giving the family a polite nod before clearing away our garbage.
“Nice to meet you all,” I pushed out with a wave of my slightly trembling fingers.
I caught up to Eliott, who had the map unfolded again to consult it, even though I would’ve bet a million dollars he’d already memorized it; there were only like ten things on there and we’d already seen half of them. “Is there a method to your madness?” I asked as casually as I could. When his eyebrows went up loftily, I said, “You know, is there a reason we have to visit the candle-making and wool-spinning before the blacksmithing?”
Folding up the map again meticulously with his beautiful fingers, he replied, “I have a plan for the ideal order to see all the demonstrations, in my opinion. I’ve been here before.”
My temper flickered, but instead of letting it out in an obvious way, I waved towards the candle-making with a flourish of one hand. “After you, since you’re the planner.”
“I followed your lead at the concert,” he pointed out, and I would have described it as meticulous even though that wasn’t a word usually associated with a tone. But it was as carefully crafted as any persona, and I wanted to pop it like a balloon with a giant needle.
The candle-making and the wool-spinning were painful. While I could appreciate the skills it took to do both things, I didn’t have some secret obsession with candles or wool. Both people got regular questions from visitors while they worked, and I did like that they still sounded happy to answer, even though they must have given them twenty times a day. But I was more of an incense and pashmina kind of a guy, so the information was boring.
Which was the purpose, after all, but it didn’t make it any easier.
“Blacksmith’s now?” I asked hopefully when Eliott finally led us out of the wool-spinning demonstration.
Eliott hummed and started walking towards promising clanging noises.
Any other day, I would’ve held his hand, because this was the perfect kind of moment for it. My right hand, knuckles brushing against Eliott’s every few paces through our thinner wool gloves, twitched with the urge to reach out and intertwine with his left. But the vibe was all wrong, and I didn’t want to lose control of my temper if he pulled away.
It had always been so important to me not to worry about what other people thought of me. But as we got to the blacksmith’s and found an open place to observe a little, wiry man hammering at a red-hot piece of metal, all I wanted was for Eliott to smile at me.
I twitched but concentrated on the blacksmith working. He didn’t talk very much, since he would’ve had to yell over the noise or talk between noises, but it was so cool.
“Now this is my speed,” I had to whisper to Eliott, daring to lean in a little closer.
“Of course, he’s making an axe,” Eliott whispered back, his tone a little warmer.
Making a noise of interest, I watched wide-eyed as the man worked.
Sparks flew and with every clang of the blacksmith’s tool on the axe-in-progress, my chest got tighter and tighter. I didn’t like the way I felt right now, and I still didn’t want to get into a fight in public or before a long drive home. But the longer Eliott stood just so apart from me, barely seeming to care that I was there, made it harder to breathe.
I tried to stave it off by commenting, “Do we get to watch a hot frontier lumberjack split wood with an axe next? Or someone demonstrating something on a horse?”
“No, I thought we’d go walk through the gardens, even though nothing’s blooming.”
“Aw, that makes me think of our date at the conservatory,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief at this hint of something romantic and date-like happening next.
He warmed up and gave me a real smile, taking my hand.
After the blacksmithing demonstration ended,
we wandered through the garden, which wasn’t interesting at all in early March, but the sky was clear after a couple weeks of gray ice-cold rain, so I was happy.
“I had a great time hanging out at Camdon’s,” I said. “I really like Sam.”
“He’s great,” Eliott agreed as we rounded a bend in the path and started heading back to the entrance of the garden again. “I’m glad you had a lot of fun, too. Even if I lost Never Have I Ever in like ten minutes and the game went on for another couple hours.”
“That’s it,” I hissed under my breath, pinning him with a glare. He scraped his hands through his short hair and avoided looking at me. “You’re being an asshole. No bantering, no flirting, and you don’t seem to be having any fun at all. Take off those fucking sunglasses so I can see your eyes and tell me what’s going on, Eliott. Did I do something wrong?”
His lips went white, he pressed them together so hard, but he ripped off his sunglasses and looked at me. It was like a punch to the heart, his beautiful green eyes big and tired.
“Eliott,” I repeated in a firm tone. “You promised me you wouldn’t go incommunicado.”
“This is my Boring Date,” he said, stubborn to the core. “I’m not incommunicado.”
I simply raised my eyebrows and glared some more.
A complicated thing I couldn’t read twitched across his expression and he shoved his hands into his pockets. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “I really am glad that you think my friends are awesome. You and everyone else shared some… fun stories.”
After he pushed the words out, whatever attempt at casualness undermined by his tired expression, I started to get a sneaking suspicion. “And you didn’t,” I said slowly.
“I don’t have stories like that, you know that.”
I wondered how I’d been too dumb to notice he needed reassurance after the party. He hadn’t taken part in sharing ‘wild stories from our youth’ and hadn’t seemed upset in the least when he lost the drinking game so quickly. I hadn’t looked any deeper because he seemed content to listen to the stories and wasn’t a drinker anyway. It hadn’t helped that I had been worried about work the next day, but it was no excuse for not paying attention.
So I shook my head the tiniest bit and then threw my hands up in the air. “You idiot.”
He gaped at me, the muscles in his arms cording with tension. “Excuse me?”
My patience cracked and I strode up to him and clasped his head in my hands, our chests almost touching with our quick breaths. “Baby, is this about the daredevil thing?”
His eyes dropped and he gave a jerky shrug.
I sighed and dug deep for how to get this through to his stubborn mind. “I thought we cleared this up, but I’ll say it again. Being a daredevil doesn’t mean I’m never afraid. Never feeling fear would make me a robot or God or something. It means that I know this life is fucking valuable, Eliott, and so fucking fragile. So I want to prove I’m worth it. I want to be good, love people, make love, jump out of planes and try new foods, and donate to charity.”
“But—”
“Ssh,” I cut him off. “But you don’t need to prove you’re worthy. You’re the best man I know, clever and smart and loyal. The way you challenge me makes me better too. You don’t need to be good at flashy things like scuba diving or peacock with purple hair and tattoos. All you have to do is stand there and look at me with those eyes and be with me, Eliott.”
His lips parted and he let out a soft little whimper.
“I’ll prove how much I mean it, too,” I barreled on. “This is a bad Boring Date and I can’t do it. I lose this one—that means I lose the bet. I’ll go to your horrifying office party.”
Growling, his arms banded around my waist and yanked me in tight to nip on my bottom lip, then pushed his tongue inside. Once I went boneless against him, my neck arching back to let him press deep and hard into my mouth, he pulled back with a gasp.
“Victory is so sweet,” he murmured, licking his lips.
“Totally worth it if it means you finally understand I—”
I choked, stuttering to a stop when I realized I’d nearly blurted out I love you. It was absolutely true, of course, it wasn’t like I’d missed falling in love with him. Everything I’d told him was a huge fucking sign spelling it out, wasn’t it? But I wanted to say it when we hadn’t just had a little fight because of Eliott’s insecurities, so he’d know for sure it wasn’t off-the-cuff words to make him feel better or thrown in his face to make him feel guilty.
“You’re a cute, sexy daredevil who needs a boring man waiting to welcome him home after he peacocks his way through every dangerous sport there is, I get it,” he said, his grin too carefree and beautiful to be categorized as a smirk. But the smugness was there in his bright eyes, his confidence restored with a few simple words and one simple bet won.
Scoffing, I shot back, “Like you don’t get hard from my peacocking.”
Eliott gave an elegant snort and brushed a kiss over my chin. “You’re going to look so good in a suit,” he whispered, and it was so lustful, the meaning of the words were delayed.
“I have the perfect thing,” I teased, tipping my head and trailing my fingers over his waist lightly. “White satin panties, black lace around the hips, and a cute little black bowtie.”
Eliott made a choking noise. “You can’t just…”
“Oh, I can. There weren’t any terms in the bet saying I have to be good,” I pointed out.
“Get your ass back to my car,” he ordered, his cheeks flushing. “We’re done here.”
I started walking, putting a little extra pep in my step, and sang, “Yes, sir.”
Chapter 36
Gavin
“Raise ‘em up for one last hoorah with the whole family before we divide and conquer for the next eighteen months!” Barley roared, lifting his tequila shot high. “Hoorah, y’all!”
The four other members of Barnyard, their significant others and kids, their personal assistants, their manager, their tour manager, their only reckless publicist, two of the record company suits, four techs, and me all raised our shots and echoed, “Hoorah, y’all!”
We drank and bit our lime slices, then grinned at each other and whooped some more.
The music in the common room of the lodge Barley had rented for the three-day trip to the Grand Canyon blared, but there was no one else for a few miles to hear. We were full of the chimichangas we’d had for dinner and overflowing with energy for the international tour, even if we weren’t going, like me. The band had finished cutting their next studio project, a twenty-fifth anniversary album of acoustic versions of some of their best hits, plus four new songs Barley had written when Eliott and I first started dating.
It was a celebration, a temporary goodbye, and a vacation all in one, and I loved it.
I hadn’t been to one before, because this was the first international tour they’d done since I was hired. But his last personal assistant, who’d trained me, told me they were like the best possible version of a company retreat, and so far, I wasn’t disappointed at all.
We danced and had a couple more shots, but that was it, since they weren’t big partiers or drinkers despite their legendary rock star statuses. Around midnight, we ate a ton of warmed up hot fudge brownies, wrapped in blankets outside, staring up at the sky. It was the beginning of April, so it had been almost seventy during the day, but it was colder now. Someone started to sing something I hadn’t heard before, a few others joining in, and one song flowed into another, some about deserts and stars, some about friendship.
It was everything I loved about this job—this family, because they really were—and I was floating with happiness and exhaustion as we all went inside and crashed out.
The next morning, we ate delicious chorizo and egg scrambles, then loaded up into SUVs to go whitewater rafting, everyone’s energy and camaraderie pumped up high.
The weather was beautiful, the company was stellar, and I hadn’t go
ne rafting in so long, I was practically vibrating on the drive to where we’d meet the guide company. Rafting was one of the few activities I did that was really about teamwork, since everyone had to help steer and pay attention for things to be safe and awesome. It was the perfect team building for the Barnyard family to do, and someone had brought small action cameras to attach to the helmets we’d be wearing so we could capture the whole thing on video.
We got to the starting point, went through the safety training with no nonsense because we were loud but not idiots, and headed to the launch point. Once we were there, we put on wetsuits because the river definitely wasn’t warm, strapped into the life vests and helmets, and off we went.
To start, it was a beginner-level stretch of river, so that we could all get reacquainted with the momentum and rhythm, plus delight in the amazing views around us on the Colorado River. We whistled and hollered, gave each other shit, and worked together.
By the time we stopped for lunch a few hours later, the river had advanced into a higher class, which required more skill and experience to navigate. We were breathless, starving, and I could feel a sunburn coming up on my nose and the back of my neck.
“Damn, I needed this,” Barley boomed from beside me. “This divorce is sucking so much of my time and energy, and I didn’t even realize until I got into the raft, you know?”
“Sorry, man, but I’m on the other end of the journey,” I told him with a little smile.
He elbowed me with enough force to almost send me tumbling. “Still going well?”
I just said simply, “Yeah, I love him. Just have to tell him.”
Whistling, he announced, “Gavin’s head over heels.”
“Not for you, I hope,” one of the other band members shouted.
Everyone else made fun of Barley’s ego, but I just smiled to myself and kept eating, sighing at the big, but completely gentle, wave of love and excitement that engulfed me.
A few minutes later, it started raining and everyone shouted in excitement. Rain wasn’t a danger when it was like this—it wasn’t like we could get any wetter, and it would only make the rapids more fun. I’d rafted in the rain a bunch of times over the years, and my heart started pounding in excitement as we wrapped up lunch and got ready to go again.
