The Wedding Date

by Sean Ashcroft

  “I have a very fast metabolism. Come on.” Caleb hovered by the door, still not watching Ethan as he pulled a t-shirt over his head. A t-shirt and jeans was dressed enough for breakfast, and a quick glance at Caleb told him that he wouldn’t look out of place. Caleb had thrown a casual shirt on as well, but it was hanging open. The look suited him, made him look younger than he often seemed. This vacation was doing him good, too.

  “Okay, breakfast,” Ethan said, heading for the door. “Then we’re gonna do something fun.”

  “Breakfast is fun,” Caleb insisted as he followed Ethan out into the hall and toward the elevator. “But we can do more fun things after.”

  “Good, ‘cause I got big plans for us.” Ethan grinned.

  Chapter Six

  “This is your idea of fun?” Caleb asked as he stared up at the ziplines overhead, the realization dawning over him that Ethan expected him to go up there. They looked impossibly high, and even with people sailing along them and laughing their heads off, Caleb wasn’t convinced this was an activity that would usually fall under the umbrella of ‘fun’ for normal people.

  Not that either of them were normal people, but also not usually adrenaline junkies, either. The most exciting thing he’d ever seen Ethan do was try a shot of hazelnut syrup in his coffee. He’d hated it and gone back to regular coffee the next day.

  “Hell yes.” Ethan grinned. “I’ve always wanted to do this.”

  “Who are you, and what have you done with my nerdy best friend?” Caleb looked at Ethan, trying to work out whether this was some kind of prank, or if he was serious.

  “You forget that your nerdy best friend got through college on a football scholarship. Probably because I never get to go outside during the day anymore.”

  Caleb swallowed. Ethan was serious, and this was genuinely something he wanted to do. Considering what Ethan was doing for him, he couldn’t really refuse to go along with it.

  “You’re afraid of flying,” Caleb said, still surprised that Ethan, of all people, would want to do this.

  “Planes crash and no one’s really sure how they work. Ziplines don’t crash.” Ethan shrugged. “I’m afraid of death. Not heights.”

  Caleb looked up at the ziplines again. A knot formed in his stomach, making him feel vaguely nauseous.

  Then he looked back to Ethan, who was clearly excited about the prospect of going on them. Ethan, who’d come here on a plane despite his fear, and who’d been the perfect boyfriend in front of his family.

  There was no way he could refuse to do this for him.

  “Are you afraid of heights? Because you live on, like, the seventh floor of your apartment building. I didn’t think it’d be a problem.”

  “No,” Caleb lied. “No, of course I’m not afraid of heights.”

  Ethan looked at him carefully for a few moments, and then nodded. “Okay. Don’t worry, I picked a place that’s meant to be awesome for beginners. You’ll be fine.”

  That was at least a little comforting. Caleb was fairly sure Ethan had thought this would be fun for him, too, so it was only polite to at least try to pretend to have fun.

  He followed Ethan silently and let him do all the talking, his stomach turning as he mounted the stairs to climb the platform when the time came.

  The safety briefing promised him there was absolutely no way he could fall, that they’d never had an accident, and that hundreds of people went down the lines every day.

  It should probably have been more comforting than it was. As the instructor checked Caleb’s harness, he could feel himself going pale. It was way too late to back out now, though.

  “You okay?” the instructor asked. Caleb tried to smile at her, scrambling to remember her name. He was normally good with names, but he was a little distracted right now.

  “I’m fine. Just a little nervous,” he lied again. He was normally good with lies, too, but he could hear the waver in his own voice this time. He wasn’t fooling anyone, let alone the instructor, whose face changed to knowingly sympathetic as soon as he said it.

  Jessica. That was her name. She smiled at Caleb, and then looked over his shoulder. “Hey, big guy. Come over here and hold your boyfriend’s hand.”

  Caleb blinked at her, stunned. “Oh, uh, that’s really not… he’s not…”

  Before he could finish what he was going to say, he felt Ethan take his hand. Jessica smiled again and nodded at him, then walked off to check some other harnesses.

  “You shoulda told me you were scared,” Ethan murmured, just loud enough for Caleb to hear. “We didn’t have to do this.”

  “I wanted to. You’re doing so much for me,” Caleb explained. “This is something you wanted, so we’re doing it.”

  “I could have gone alone.”

  “But you wouldn’t have.” Caleb turned to face Ethan, not willing to let go of his hand just yet. “I would have refused if I really, really didn’t want to. I’m just scared. I can handle it. You handled your fear of flying for me.”

  “Yeah, well. I can at least hold your hand. Which you did for me.”

  “The instructors think we’re together,” Caleb said. He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that. On the one hand, he liked the idea that people thought he belonged with Ethan. On the other hand, he was afraid Ethan would get tired of being assumed gay and would resent him later.

  “We are together.” Ethan shrugged. “It’s good practice, anyway. We’ve gotta survive another few days of putting on a show for your family. The more we pretend, the easier it’ll be.”

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were looking for an excuse to hold my hand.” Caleb managed to smile, relaxing a little now that his fear was out in the open. At least now, it wouldn’t matter if it was really obvious that he was afraid.

  “I never said I wasn’t nervous, too.” Ethan smiled back sheepishly. “You did promise I could hold your hand if I was scared.”

  “I did. And you can.” Caleb squeezed Ethan’s hand. His heart fluttered at the thought that Ethan actually wanted to hold his hand, even if it was just for support.

  “You two ready to go?” Jessica called out, interrupting the moment.

  Caleb glanced at Ethan to double-check, and then nodded. “We’re ready,” he said, tugging Ethan over to the edge of the platform. There were two lines side-by-side, so they’d both be going at once.

  Caleb’s heart pounded in his chest as he was hooked up to the line, but no one made him let go of Ethan’s hand. That was good, because he wasn’t sure he could have done it. He couldn’t get his fingers to move at all.

  “You ready?” Ethan asked, looking over at him. Caleb nodded, taking a deep breath.

  “Just lift your legs off the platform when you’re going,” Jessica said. “Gravity will do the rest.”

  “I hate gravity,” Caleb murmured, but it was definitely too late to back out now. He forced himself to let go of Ethan’s hand and jumped off the platform, screaming the moment he started to move forward and clinging to the handholds as though they were the only thing between him and hitting the ground.

  For a few seconds, all he could hear was the sound of his own scream and his heart pounding in his ears. Then, as his voice started to give out, he heard laughter. Ethan’s laughter.

  Caleb forced himself to turn and look at Ethan. The moment he did, all of his fear faded away. Ethan looked so happy. Happier than Caleb had ever seen him in his life, smiling so broadly it made Caleb’s face hurt just to look at him.

  He was beautiful. He was always beautiful, but especially so right now. Caleb would have gone down a hundred ziplines to see him like this.

  Ethan caught his eye and grinned at him. Despite himself, Caleb managed to smile back. The harness was cutting into his legs, and fear was still making his stomach turn, but he was getting used to it now. It was freeing, hanging forty feet in the air above genuinely beautiful gardens lined with palm and pineapple trees, with a view out over the beach and the mountains in the distance
. Volcanoes, Caleb remembered. The cool breeze was nice on his sun-warmed skin.

  He was just beginning to see the appeal as they came to the end of the line. Another instructor helped him get unhooked, and he stepped onto the solid ground with shaky legs and his heart still racing. That hadn’t been so bad, after all.

  “I’m really proud of you,” Ethan said. “You took that way better than I thought you would.”

  “I screamed for the whole first half of the line,” Caleb said, his throat protesting even as he spoke.

  “You could’ve screamed the whole time.” Ethan shrugged.

  “I kinda got into it toward the end there,” Caleb admitted. Not as much as Ethan had been into it, though. He’d never thought of him as the outdoorsy type. Ethan seemed pretty content to sit behind a desk all day, every day.

  But then, he did take the stairs even when he didn’t have to, and he had played football in college. Maybe he just didn’t do stuff like this because he never got the opportunity.

  “Good, ‘cause there’s another four lines to go.”

  Caleb swallowed. “Oh.”

  “But we can stop right now if you want to,” Ethan said. “Seriously. I’ve had my fun.”

  “No.” Caleb shook his head. “I’m not gonna let you go home with the story that I chickened out after the first line. If you can do this, I can do this.”

  Ethan laughed and slung his arm over Caleb’s shoulders, turning him in the direction of the next platform, which he could see a hundred yards or so away. It was nice to have Ethan’s arm around him, especially since his legs were still shaking. Caleb let himself lean a little closer than he normally would have to Ethan’s body, close enough to hear his heart beating as well.

  “I told you this was fun,” Ethan said as they walked. “Thank you for having faith.”

  “Are you gonna tell me you work out, next?”

  “I do.” Ethan cleared his throat. “I never told you ‘cause I figured you’d laugh. I only go a couple of times a week.”

  “That’s… probably fair. I’m not laughing now, though. This is kind of an awesome side of you that I didn’t know existed.”

  “You think it’s awesome?” Ethan asked, clearly surprised. Caleb shrugged, careful not to dislodge Ethan’s arm.

  “Well, yeah. I thought I knew everything about you, but I guess I was wrong. And everything about you is awesome.”

  “You don’t have to practice being my boyfriend that hard,” Ethan said.

  Caleb blushed. He was letting his mouth run without thinking about what he was saying first, and Ethan had noticed. Keeping his secret crush a secret was proving harder than he thought, now that he had to walk the line between pretending he was into Ethan and actually being into Ethan.

  “Listen, this is my chance to say nice things about you without it being weird. I’m taking it,” Caleb explained. He hoped Ethan would accept that he was just being a little more open than usual, and not think too much about why Caleb thought so highly of him in the first place.

  “Hey, don’t stop if you don’t want to. Just don’t feel like you have to be nice to me. I’m already committed to this. If you hate me forever because I made you go ziplining, just tell me,” Ethan said.

  “I don’t hate you forever because you made me go ziplining. I’m actually glad you did. I never get to do things like this.”

  “Okay, cool. I’ll race you down the next one, then,” Ethan said, letting go of Caleb’s shoulder and jogging ahead of him, laughing as he headed for the next platform. Caleb took off after him, knowing he’d never beat Ethan on foot, but determined to beat him down the next line.

  Perhaps his idea of fun hadn’t been so bad after all.

  Chapter Seven

  Ethan had been worried about having his shirt off in public when Caleb had first suggested they head down to the hotel pool, but that only lasted until he saw the way Caleb looked at him.

  He was obviously trying not to look at him, but Ethan could see Caleb staring when he thought he could get away with it. Maybe it should have been weird or uncomfortable, but if Ethan was being honest with himself, it was nice.

  Caleb was attracted to men. Ethan had been fine with that since day one, so much so that he’d barely batted an eyelid when he found out. It wasn’t as though Ethan had never met a gay man before, and it wasn’t as though he was afraid Caleb was going to start hitting on him. If for no other reason than that he was pretty sure Caleb could do better.

  Caleb’s choice of men in terms of personality were terrible, but they were always gorgeous. The ones Ethan had met or seen photos of were, at least. So the fact that Caleb wanted to look at him was a nice ego boost.

  Ethan wasn’t used to feeling attractive. Maybe it was weird to be happy that his best friend thought he was, but he was way past comfortable with Caleb, and he trusted him. He didn’t feel the need to worry about the knowledge that when Caleb looked at him, he liked what he saw. Or at least the assumed knowledge. Ethan knew it was possible he was wrong.

  “So do you know how to swim, or…?” Caleb asked as they approached the side of the pool, breaking Ethan out of his thoughts.

  “I know how, but it’s been a while since I did,” Ethan said. “You?”

  “Uh. Kinda? I’m more of a lie beside the pool and drink cocktails kinda guy.” Caleb shrugged. “But it’s stupidly hot and I’m sticky and I figure that’s why there’s a shallow end, right?”

  “I won’t let you drown,” Ethan promised. “I need someone to help me get through the plane ride back.”

  Caleb chuckled. “Of course. I don’t think I’m in danger of drowning. I know how to swim in principle, I was just maybe five years old the last time I did.”

  “You’ll be fine.” Ethan sat down on the edge of the pool and lowered himself in. It only came up to his mid-chest, which would be a little higher on Caleb, but he wasn’t about to drown in shoulder-deep water unless something went really wrong.

  Caleb sat on the edge and gripped it so hard his knuckles went white. Ethan wasn’t sure he’d been this afraid on the ziplines, and he’d been pretty afraid of those. Well, on the first one, anyway. By the third one, they’d been racing each other down them in earnest, and Caleb had even beaten him on the last one. It had been good to see Caleb having fun.

  They’d both been stressed at work lately, just getting through one week after another and trying not to burn out completely, so this vacation couldn’t have come along at a better time. The more he thought about it, the more glad Ethan was that he’d volunteered to come along, and that Caleb had agreed. They deserved to take a break.

  “I’m not gonna let you drown,” Ethan said again, softly. He held out his hands to Caleb. “You don’t need to be scared.”

  Caleb hesitated for another moment, then took Ethan’s hands. “Okay. Okay.” He nodded, and then eased himself into the water, shivering as the change in temperature hit him. Ethan grinned at him.

  “See? Nothing to worry about.”

  “I knew that,” Caleb defended.

  “Obviously,” Ethan agreed. “But for what it’s worth, I’m glad you trust me enough to be afraid in front of me. That probably sounds dumb, but I do really appreciate it.”

  “It doesn’t sound dumb,” Caleb said. “I get it, I think. Besides, I’m starting to like holding your hand.”

  Ethan felt himself blush, and hoped Caleb would take it as the effect of the sun. He hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it, but he was starting to like holding Caleb’s hand, too. It had been almost two years since he’d gotten past one date with someone else, and his last serious relationship had been in college. Physical contact was nice.

  “I don’t hate it either,” Ethan admitted. “Which I think means I need to get laid.”

  Caleb laughed at that. “Has anyone caught your eye?”

  A tiny spark of guilt made Ethan’s stomach twinge, and he wished he hadn’t said anything. He’d pushed the thought away earlier, tried to pretend to himself that he had
n’t had it at all, but someone had caught his eye.

  The problem was, that someone was Caleb.

  He’d turned around while they were getting out of their harnesses earlier and seen Caleb laughing and joking with a male instructor—one he obviously thought was cute—and something had changed in him. It was new, and scary, and he wasn’t sure how to deal with it just yet.

  Firstly, he wasn’t attracted to guys. At least, not usually. Once or twice, when he’d been young and confused, sure. But not since high school, and he’d written those other times off as meaningless and hormone-driven. He’d been attracted to anyone who might possibly have sex with him then. He assumed that was just what being a teenager was like.

  When he’d had the thought earlier, he’d pushed it away so fast he’d almost forgotten about it already. But then Caleb had to go and ask.

  “Uh, no,” Ethan said, realizing he’d gone quiet. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to blow our cover. Maybe I’ll pick up a Tinder date when we get home.”

  “You don’t use Tinder.” Caleb wrinkled his nose. He’d tried Grindr for a few weeks last year and given up on it pretty quickly, so he wasn’t the biggest fan of hookup apps. Or online dating in general. Despite the fact that he worked with computers all day, Caleb insisted that he liked to meet people the old-fashioned way, face to face.

  “I could.” Ethan shrugged. “Maybe, I dunno. I guess I’ll find out when the time comes.”

  “I guess it’s probably not so bad with women.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Ethan agreed. He wished he could get the jolt of attraction he’d felt toward Caleb out of his head, but that was proving harder than it seemed like it should have been.

  It was a stupid thought, and nothing was going to come of it, but he still couldn’t stop thinking about it. Especially with Caleb right there, smiling at him and trusting him and still sneaking glances at his body when he thought Ethan wasn’t paying attention.

  “I’m gonna swim a few laps, if you think you’ll be okay here?” Swimming would clear his head. Having to focus on something other than how much he suddenly liked Caleb’s smile would help him either forget about it, or figure out what to do next.