Mister Bodyguard

by Ivy Oliver

  Yeah, good luck with that, Maury.

  In the theater, I briefly press flesh with the cast and crew. I know a few of them from our failed attempt to put the actual movie on screen. The lead actress is a dead ringer for Sandy, only slightly, ah, less endowed. Jim beams at everyone as he shakes hands, towering over them in his tux.

  Finally, Lucas and I manage to find our seats.

  The curtains rise, and the film starts.

  I laugh a few times, cringe at others. Jim's delivery is hammy, and Sandy has a small role herself, as a character named Skylar—a dead ringer for my mother. We jazzed up the story. It grows into something vast and absurd; rather than stealing money from her husband, Sandy's character is running a money laundering outfit for the Mafia. The movie ends with a battle between Jim and the Mafiosi, where he doesn't realize they were really trying to kill him until it's all over and he faints.

  The audience love it—they laugh their asses off. As the credits roll, everyone around us rises in a standing ovation. I leap to my feet and clap, hard, cheering and whistling.

  Lucas grabs me and kisses me, hard. The world turns around us, spinning madly. I think of everything that happened before I ended up here and shiver.

  They may not be clapping for us, but this is my happy ending.

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  Included next is a sample of my second book, Mister Bridesmaid. Enjoy!

  Mister Bridesmaid, Chapter One

  Julian

  The last day in paradise.

  If you can call this paradise, anyway. At six-thirty in the afternoon, it’s ninety degrees in the shade. Although I’ve been informed it’s a dry heat, I don’t feel dry at all. This whole trip I’ve felt like a fish out of water—at a fish fry.

  My skin is dry, my hair is turned to straw, and I go into a sneezing fit every time I go from inside to outside, thanks to my sinuses. Every building roars a blast of cold air like an ice dragon when you walk inside, banishing the heat. This whole city is a monument to man’s arrogance. Right now, the biggest thing on my mind is returning to Seattle and the nice, cool, humid world I’ve come to call home.

  Well, second biggest thing on my mind. The biggest would be Colton Steele, my best friend’s brother. At this very moment, he’s a scant twenty feet away, cupping a neat whisky in one hand as if he’s looking for the first opportunity to dive off the rooftop bar. Even scowling, he’s so handsome it physically hurts to look at him, like a crushing fist in my chest. His dark hair is always tussled just so, self-organizing according to its own perfection. His eyes are a dark blue, the most striking aspect of his tanned, chiseled features. High cheekbones, strong nose, full lips.

  I haven’t seen him in six years and, in the interim, he hasn’t really gotten older, only become more himself. He always filled out his clothes but now his massive shoulders and chest pull the striped fabric of a designer polo tight across his frame. When he breathes, I catch little glimpses of the outlines of ridged abdominal muscles on his belly and, if he moves just right, the untucked tail of his shirt reveals a sculpted V I’d like to trace with my tongue until he shoves my head between his legs.

  Yeah. My BFF’s older brother…reason why I know I’m gay. I messed around with Karen a little a long, long time ago, but I realized that despite our tweeny-bopper adolescent “dates” I had zero interest in her in that way, yet her brother brought me to full attention with just a word or a glance. Not that he often favored me with either. He disappeared from her life, pretty much, when the pair of us started high school. From then on, he became a ghost. Every once in a while, she’d show me a picture: Here he is parasailing. Here he is in ROTC. Here he is in his Navy whites. I filed all those away in the deepest vaults of my spank bank and never told my best friend, Karen, that I have a deep-seated thing for her brother.

  “Thing” undersells it. Obsession. Infatuation. Hidden crush. Secret lust.

  We’ve been in Las Vegas a week; he’s been here the entire time, and I have yet to exchange more than six words with him. When he said hello to me, I was too shocked by his presence to offer more than a muttered “hi” and slip into hiding beneath his sister’s metaphorical skirts. I hovered around the siblings during their tense catch-up sessions, like a potted plant someone forgot to water, before I slunk off to find something to do. Karen and Colton are not on the best of terms. That’s a bit of an understatement: She goes full ice whenever he speaks to her and rarely starts a conversation.

  That’s the grind of this trip. Unless Karen has time to hang out, there’s not much here for me to actually occupy myself with. A gambling mecca doesn’t hold much interest if you’ve got no money to roll on the bones or whatever they say. So far, I’ve only managed to lose ten bucks in pennies to a one-armed bandit, and it totally satisfied my gambling-tooth. Why do people willingly play a game they call a bandit? That they know is going to lighten their wallets? What’s the appeal?

  So, I have nothing to do but try to wedge myself into hanging out with my best friend or fantasize about her brother bending me over a roulette table.

  That mental image is going in the bank.

  I’m here on Karen’s dime. I’m in an odd spot: I’m serving as her Man of Honor in her wedding, which is apparently a thing now. The ceremony will be held tomorrow. On Key West. Yeah, she put up her extended family and friends in hotels in Vegas for a week before her wedding, we’re spending another week in Florida after, and then she and her husband Alex are heading off to Europe for another two weeks after that.

  Karen’s parents are loaded. As is Colton, and as is Karen herself, though most of her fortune she got on her own. Though she doesn’t act like it’s anything special, Karen built a thriving online makeup business after moving a continent away from her parents. We all grew up on the East Coast—Karen is Mid-Atlantic Aristocracy and I’m the son of a waitress and a “traveling salesman” who only had a house because Mom inherited a half acre of what used to be a ten-acre farm.

  I became fast friends with Karen starting in fifth grade and from there we were inseparable. You see, Colton attended private academies from pre-pre-school all the way to Harvard. Karen went to public schools with the likes of me.

  Yeah.

  Fast forward to my floundering freelancer career. Karen and her business are responsible for about half of the work I do.

  My head is spinning in circles. Go talk to him. Go talk to him. Go talk to him.

  I don’t know why. It’s a lost cause. He’s straight as an arrow. Every once in a while, he’d text Karen a picture of himself with one or two stunningly attractive women in Dubai or Paris or wherever he was that week. I guess when he was in the Navy, he was an actual honest to God girl-in-every-port kind of guy, maybe two at a time. He radiates straightness like body heat off a panther. Yeah, I have no chance.

  I mean, hell, he doesn’t even look back at me when I stare right at him. What am I supposed to do, hike up my shorts and show some leg?

  Karen bumps my arm with her fist and shakes me out of my weird session of mixed up fantasizing and internal complaining. She’s wearing a giant straw hat and there’s a smudge of sunscreen on her nose, just like every other day we’ve been here. The effort she’s taken to avoid even a farmer’s tan astonishes me, given she’s arranged to be in the sun almost constantly for a month. She and Colton have the same coloring—inky dark hair, pale skin, blue eyes. Only he tans nicely and a hint of sun makes her explode in a profusion of freckles that cover her face and arms as densely as raindrops in a thunderstorm.

  “Having fun yet?” she says.

  We exchange looks and the answer is left painfully unspoken. I’m a fifth wheel here. Between her parents, relations, and distant friends, she’s surrounded by people. We always used to lean on each other a lot; back when we first bonded, she and I were both awkward. I was skinny and g
angly and she was plump and pimply. I grew skinnier and ganglier and she stretched out into a bombshell who can model her own products. If she were vainer, less driven, and her parents gave a shit, she’d be a runway model or a personality on television. I’m kind of glad they didn’t. If they’d cared enough to prepare her for that kind of field, we’d never have met. I never tell her that, though.

  The core of her personality never changed, though. She leans back against the railing and stands next to me, looking out over the Strip. We’re on the rooftop of one of the big casino-hotels. Her parents insisted on booking the entire rooftop space every afternoon for the whole wedding party and the guests to mingle before breaking off for various activities.

  So far, it’s been all the usual stuff. Shows, casino runs, that kind of thing. She took a helicopter ride with her fiancé and some of her cousins of lesser wealth have been renting Ferraris and tearing around the desert. Tonight, though, is the bachelor/bachelorette party night and it’s time to find out what I’ve been dreading to learn all day: Which side of the wedding party I’m going to be obligated to go with.

  I have zero in common with her husband-to-be, and that’s fine. I’m friends with her, not him, and I barely see the guy. It would be weird to join the bachelor party. I already told her I consider the whole thing kind of toxic.

  “I want you to go with the guys,” she says.

  A sigh flows out of me like air from a deflating balloon.

  “Oh, come on. What are you worried about?” she says, and then, “I want you to be my spy,” softly.

  I quirk an eyebrow. “Say what, now?”

  “Lower your voice,” she hisses, sharply. “I just want someone I trust to be there.”

  “Isn’t your brother going?”

  She doesn’t go full on smirk, but her eyebrow twitches. “Yeah, he is.”

  Part of me wants to shout, I’ve changed my mind, I will gladly go, but I play coy.

  Then it hits me. She wants someone she trusts. Her brother is still on the list of not-she-trusts.

  “You really should talk to him,” I shrug.

  She rolls her shoulders and looks down at her feet.

  “I’ve been talking to him. He can’t hear me over the sound of what a perfect military hero douchebag he is.”

  They had a serious argument a few years ago. It was over the phone, but something made her just unload on him, start screaming. Before it turned hot, their conflict was a cold war. Things between them have been tense this entire time and he’s just sort of floated along during all the activities, like a teenage boy at a middle school dance who’s too cool to be there. It doesn’t diminish his aloof debonair charm, but it is worrying.

  “He met you halfway. He didn’t have to be here.”

  There’s a lot more to this argument than she lets on. I still don’t know what the actual quarrel is.

  “Are you worried about Alex?” I say very, very softly.

  “Yeah,” she says in a deadly whisper. “Well, not him. My cousin Trevor is here, and he’s a douche.”

  I agree on the douche-ness of Trevor. When she says his name, I sneak a glance at him, over by the open bar pre-gaming. His hair and wraparound sunglasses make him look like someone put Guy Fieri on a diet and dumped a bucket of tanning chemicals over his head. Someone should tell him that pastel white board shorts and orange skin make him look like he works his day job in a magical candy factory.

  My eyes slide right back to Colton, and Karen practically has to snap her fingers to get my attention.

  “I figure if you’re there, nobody will pressure the group into doing anything stupid, you know?”

  “Yeah,” I admit. “Yeah, that makes sense. So, less eyes-and-ears and more boat anchor?”

  “That’s not what I meant,” she jabs back, her voice warbling back and forth between apologetic and annoyed.

  “I should have just joined you in Florida. I don’t fit in this crowd.”

  “Me either,” she says, downing the last of her drink. “Having you around is the only thing keeping me sane. I try to hang out but someone is always trying to pull me away.”

  “Especially her,” I say quietly, nodding to Bethany.

  Bethany is one of Karen’s many cousins, the kind of cousins who are constantly at each other’s throats but must tolerate each other for social purposes. Karen and Beth belonged to the same sorority. Beth stalks, prowls, hovers. This is one of those family situations where Beth is from one of the “lesser branches” of the family, and she knows it. If the family tree was a river of money, she’d be on the fork of one of the tributaries. Nobody in the whole clan really has to work, but some are more equal than others.

  Karen’s dad is the firstborn son of a firstborn son and so on, so it all flows that way. There’s some resentment there. Some scheming. Bethany has shark eyes, ready to roll over white when she sinks in her teeth.

  Back then, Beth was like a lesser copy of Karen—shorter, squarer, with worse skin and limper hair. Karen rolled out of bed in the morning looking better and she quickly became the star of all their social circles, and Bethany hated it. When she showed up here, she’d been liposuctioned, bleached, and implanted. I overheard Colton remarking that she looks like a stripper. I’ve also noticed she’s been showering Alex with attention all week.

  Karen glances at me.

  “I’m just nervous,” she says. “It’s something in the air. Look, you don’t have to get wasted. I’d prefer that no one get wasted. We’re flying out tomorrow at two and everyone has to be out of the hotel by eleven. I planned it that way.”

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  “You’ll still have to peel Trevor out of a gutter by morning,” she says, disgusted. “Look at him.”

  Trevor, presently, holds a superhuman quantity of beer in a long plastic container shaped like a trumpet with a giant curly straw. Disgusted, I clear my throat.

  “We’re going to break this up soon and my parents are taking the older family members to see Cirque. Meanwhile we celebrate our last night of ‘freedom.’”

  “I hate that,” I say.

  “So do I. Getting married shouldn’t feel like going to prison. This whole destination thing was his idea, you know. I wanted to go to the Justice of the Peace and get this over with. Then my parents insisted on a ceremony and Alex jumped in with his huge plans. Aren’t guys supposed to detest weddings?”

  She’s getting cold feet, or just nervous. Growing up, Karen had crippling social anxiety, and it only started to fade when she grew into her genius, supermodel self, but it’s still there. Despite her gorgeous looks and brilliance, she has to steel herself to do anything that makes her the center of attention. She must be pining for the chance to just be alone with Alex on their honeymoon.

  My heart is starting to speed up. Going to a bachelor party with Colton. Whatever the party might entail, I might work up the courage to actually talk to him. I don’t know why I want to. I’ll just get hurt. It’ll be like running face-first into a brick wall. With an erection. He hasn’t even looked at me.

  Except right now. His eyes snap down to his phone as I look over. Karen doesn’t notice.

  “Just do this for me, alright? I’m really going to appreciate it.”

  “Yeah. You know all you have to do is ask.”

  She punches my arm and taps her forehead against mine. It gets a few looks from distant members of the family and friends who might not realize I’m gay, or that we only do that because cats do it. We were those kinds of kids.

  Yeah.

  The pre-party starts breaking up. Alex’s best friend Jeremy, also his Best Man, is the organizer and master of ceremonies, and he’s started herding all the guys together. I drift over, halfway between invited and uninvited, in the awkward position of being sent by the bride.

  Karen is over in the corner having a tense conversation with Colton about something I can’t hear. In my secret realm of fantasies, I desperately hope she’s trying to set us up.

  She p
robably doesn’t even know I like him.

  Like? Listen to yourself, Julian. What am I, twelve?

  Finally, he heads over, walking with a canted posture, shoulders bunched, like a bull who’s picked out a plump runner who doesn’t belong in Pamplona. He squares up next to me.

  Jeremy and Trevor have hit it off, by the looks of things. Birds of a feather. They give Alex those challenging guy-pushes on the chest and shoulders as they loudly declaim the night’s activities. We’re going to a bar first, surprise surprise. I guess somebody rented a shuttle. That’s good. I don’t want to end up sloshed and stumbling around the streets of Las Vegas. I’m sure by the end of the night I’ll have downed enough Cosmos to kill a bull elephant. I doubt I’m getting through this, either way.

  So it begins. Jeremy and his co-conspirator Trevor make loud bullish calls and then everyone—about thirty guys—pile into two elevators, since one won’t hold the entire group. I end up smashed into the corner—next to Colton.

  God, what a sweet hell. It’s just the outside of his arm pressed against my back, but the warmth is intoxicating, and I can smell him, earthy musk beneath leathery cologne. He sniffs the air—though he isn’t the only one—as if to ask who’s wearing the flowery scent. That’d be me.

  The doors open and the press ends. I gravitate towards him, hoping that maybe sometime this decade I’ll work up the courage to say something like “hi” or “so, how do you feel about this objectifying ritual of toxic masculinity?” but before I even formulate any words, I’m swept along with the crowd through an opulent palace of a casino lobby and out into the blasting heat and sunlight and again into the dark, in the back of a shuttle van. The shuttles are big, hulking cargo vans with lifted roofs painted black with graphics.