by J. M. Snyder
Though Braden’s back was still turned towards them, he said over his shoulder, “Whenever you say someone like that, you always mean me.”
“Remind me to thank Chell for all her help when I finally meet her,” Remy remarked, sarcastic. “If she’s even waiting for us at the airport like she said she would be. Have I told you yet how much I don’t like that woman?”
Lane kissed Remy’s neck, and Remy could feel his lover’s grin against his skin. “Not today, you haven’t.”
“Well, I don’t,” Remy announced. “Not one bit. If anything goes wrong while we’re in Hawaii, it’ll be all her fault.”
“What can go wrong?” Lane countered, hugging Remy to him tightly. “When what we have together is so obviously right.”
Grudgingly, Remy had to agree.
* * * *
Their flight out of Richmond left at an ungodly hour; they were in the air before Remy was usually even out of bed most mornings. He expected to catch a few hours’ sleep on the short flight to Houston, where they would switch planes. But he was sitting next to Braden and this was his son’s first time ever in an airplane. Despite the early hour, Braden was too wired up to just sit back and relax. He sat with his nose pressed to the window, every few minutes, he elbowed his father to point out something only he could see. “Look, Dad!” he’d cry, jabbing at the glass. “I can see your house! Look!”
“You can’t,” Remy told him. “It’s still dark out. The sun’s not even up. Can we just close the shade and—”
“I can see the headlights on the interstate!” Braden crowed. “The cars all look so tiny up here!”
“Brae, please,” Remy tried. “Keep it down, will you? People are trying to sleep.”
But Braden wasn’t listening. “Everyone out there’s going to work. Hey, all you people!” He waved out the window, as if anyone might possibly be able to see him from this height. Then a thought occurred to him, and he whirled around in his seat towards his father. “Are we going to meet Nana and Pops when we land?”
Remy sighed. “They’re in California. We’re going to Texas.” When Braden continued to stare at him, expectant, Remy clarified, “No.”
“Will Mom and Uncle Mike be there, then?” Braden wanted to know.
“They’re flying in tomorrow,” Remy explained.
Braden didn’t seem to get it. “But are they going to be waiting for us—”
“No.” Smacking his head back against the seat, Remy rolled it to the side and looked across the aisle at Lane, who was grinning over at them. “Switch seats?” Remy mouthed.
Their plane had two rows of seats: Lane had a seat by himself, and across from him, Remy and Braden sat together. Chell must’ve thought father and son wanted to sit side by side, but seeing Lane all alone, without anyone elbowing or kicking him to keep him awake, Remy wanted that seat, instead. Now was the time to switch—the plane was in the air, the Fasten Seatbelts sign was off, and the stewardess had started pushing the trolley up the aisle to serve refreshments. She was still near the front of the plane, though, and far away from where the three of them were sitting.
Lane leaned forward, against the seat in front of him, and looked past Remy at Braden. “Why don’t you come sit over here and look out my window for a while?” he offered. We’re going to be passing over the mountains soon. I don’t know how well you’ll be able to see them…”
That was as far as he got before Braden scrambled over Remy’s knees and into the aisle. Lane half-rose, and Braden shoved past him, barreling into his legs to claim his seat. “The Blue Ridge?” Braden asked. “We went there last year! Will we have snow again this Christmas? Can we build a snowman again? Can we?”
Remy laughed as he closed his eyes. “We’ll be in Hawaii for Christmas,” he reminded his son. He moved his legs aside as Lane stepped over him to sit in the empty window seat. “They don’t get snow there.”
“Why not?” Braden asked.
“It’s too hot,” Lane told him.
Braden pressed his nose to the window, and instantly the glass fogged up beneath his breath. He wiped at it with his sleeve. “How can you have Christmas with no snow?”
“You don’t always get snow at Christmas,” Lane said softly.
“But I want snow.” Braden’s pout was evident in his voice.
Remy growled, “You can’t always get what you want.” He heard Lane snicker and opened one eye to glance at his lover. “What?”
“Such a dad answer,” Lane said with a smirk. “Next it’ll be, ‘Don’t make me turn this plane around’.”
Braden gasped and whirled away from the window, eyes wide with fear. “You won’t let him, will you? They won’t listen, will they?” His voice quivered. “I want to go to Hawaii! He promised!”
“We’re going, don’t worry,” Lane assured him.
Remy closed his eyes again and muttered, “Can’t get there soon enough.”
* * * *
They had an hour and a half layover in Houston, which wasn’t too bad. Braden wanted lunch, but it was only eight in the morning when they landed, and most of the places to eat were gated and locked up tight. The only places open were those serving breakfast. Lane and Remy were satisfied with bagels, coffee, and the morning paper, but Braden saw a McDonald’s and nothing less would suffice. He was still pretty wound up from the excitement of the trip, and spent much of the time running between their table in the food court and large, floor-to-ceiling windows, where he could watch the planes circling the airport.
When they were in the air again, none of them had a window seat. They were in a much larger plane, a Boeing 777, and Chell had gotten them three seats together in the middle row. Lane was on the end, Remy beside him, and Braden trapped beside his father and another couple he didn’t know. As soon as they sat down, Braden’s face fell, and Remy could sense a mood beginning to build. Under the pretense of fastening his seat belt, he leaned over to Lane and whispered, “This is going to be a fun eight and a half hours.”
Lane glanced down the row and gave Braden a tight-lipped smile. “Hey, kid.”
Without looking in Lane’s direction, Braden muttered, “What.”
Lane winked at Remy. “Switch you seats again. This isn’t exactly the window, but you might be able to see something better from over here.”
Braden’s face lit up and he hurriedly unbuckled his seatbelt to clamber over Remy. Lane stood and pressed against the seat in front of him to let Braden slide into his empty spot, then scooted over. Before Lane could pass him by, Remy grabbed his lover’s waist and pulled Lane down into his lap.
“Hey!” Lane cried with a laugh. “I think they frown on this. I’m pretty sure it’s one person per seat.”
Remy kissed the nape of Lane’s neck. “I love how good you are to him.”
Wiggling his butt to grind into Remy’s lap, Lane teased, “Is that all you love about me?”
Remy grabbed the front of Lane’s jeans and squeezed his lover’s crotch. “I don’t have time to go over every little thing. How about I give you the short list?”
“I think I know what’s on that list,” Lane said, thrusting his hips against Remy’s hand.
“Only one thing,” Remy told him. He kissed Lane’s neck again, then the tender spot behind Lane’s ear. “You.”
* * * *
When they had left Richmond, the temperature was just below freezing. They’d taken Lane’s Jeep to the airport because it had a remote starter, which let it warm up while they finished getting ready to leave. Because they had to get such an early start, Braden had slept over; Remy was glad he only had to make a mad dash for the Jeep once, and didn’t have to get out at Kate’s, run through her cold garage to retrieve his son, then run back to the idling Jeep to warm up again. Two of Lane’s employees would drive out later in the day to retrieve the Jeep and park it at his office instead, so he wouldn’t have to pay premium rates to leave it at the airport.
The heavy jackets Remy, Lane, and Braden wore into the a
irport were quickly shucked off and stowed in their luggage before they checked their bags. Beneath the coats, they had layered for comfort—T-shirts under long-sleeved flannel shirts, jeans, sneakers. Braden had a hoodie on, too, and when the stewardess told him he had to return to his seat after he spent most of the flight to Hawaii standing behind a stranger’s seat staring out the window, he pulled the hood up over his face and pouted as he played his DS.
Remy tried to cheer him up. “We’re probably getting ready to land, buddy. You might want to buckle up.”
“Seatbelt light’s still off,” Braden grumbled. “I wanted to see something other than water out the window for a change. This sucks.”
“We’re almost there,” Remy assured him, but the words sounded hollow. Almost was relative. They’d been traveling all blessed day, though when he looked at his phone, he was surprised to see it had corrected for the time zone on its own. Amused, he showed the screen to his son. “Look, we left Houston at 9:30 and have been in the air for eight hours, but it’s just 1:30, so only half that time has passed. Isn’t that cool?”
Braden barely glanced at Remy’s iPhone, then turned back to his DS. A moment later, he paused his game and looked at the phone again. “Whoa, wait. How’s it only afternoon still? We’ve been flying forever.”
“It should be night, right?” Remy grinned.
Pushing back his hood, Braden nodded. “That’s so cool! We still have the whole day to do stuff!”
The thought exhausted Remy, whose attempts to sleep on the plane hadn’t amounted to much. “We’ll probably want to take it easy,” he cautioned. “We’re going to be pretty jet lagged when we land.”
“What’s that mean?” Braden asked.
“It means we’re going to want to crash,” Lane interjected from Remy’s other side.
Remy patted his lover’s knee and laughed. “Exactly.”
Braden touched the screen of Remy’s phone. “It is really only 1:30?”
“Go look out the window,” Remy told him. “See for yourself.”
But Braden’s brow furrowed, and his frown returned. “The lady said I couldn’t. She said I had to sit down.”
Remy leaned over and whispered, “I’m sure she won’t be mad if you take a quick peek.”
As soon as he started to stand, though, the seatbelt light clicked on and the pilot’s voice came over the loudspeaker, announcing their arrival at Honolulu. Braden collapsed into his seat with a pout. “Told you,” he muttered.
“Well, you’ll see soon enough,” Remy said, buckling his seatbelt. “If we’re landing, we’ll be outside in no time. Then you’ll see the sun’s still shining and in another few hours, we’ll be able to eat dinner all over again.”
Turning to Lane, he added, “If your friend’s waiting for us like she said. Otherwise we’ll spend the rest of the afternoon figuring out how to get to the hotel without getting lost. She didn’t even bother to rent me a car, did I tell you that?”
“Only fifty million times,” Lane joked, giving Remy a quick peck in the corner of his mouth. “Let’s bet on it. If she isn’t there, you win and I’ll buy you the biggest margarita we can find on the island. But if she is there, and I win…”
“What do you get?” Remy asked with a grin.
Lane raised one eyebrow suggestively. “Oh, I’m sure I’ll be able to think of something.”
* * * *
Braden seemed to have an unlimited wealth of excitement bubbling up inside of him; he practically hummed with unspent energy as they disembarked from the airplane. Remy wished they could bottle his son’s enthusiasm because he sure could have used some of it himself. Even though Braden hadn’t slept a wink during the entire trip, one wouldn’t have known it from the way he skipped and jumped and ran ahead while Remy and Lane dragged after him. By the time they caught up with him in the luggage claim area, he already had one of their bags and was manhandling another off the conveyor belt. “I’ve…almost…got it,” he huffed, struggling with Lane’s oversized duffle bag.
Lane plucked it out of Braden’s hands easily and set it on end on the floor so he could pull it along after him. “I have it,” he said. “And you have yours. Now if we can just find your dad’s…”
“They probably left it back in Texas,” Remy groused.
“Can they do that?” Braden asked, fearful.
“No,” Lane assured him.
But Remy answered, “Sure. They do it all the time.”
“Maybe Mommy can pick it up on her way over,” Braden said.
“Yeah, I doubt it.” Remy studied the conveyor belt, hoping to catch sight of his bags amid the rest of the luggage.
Just as his bag peeked out from the rubber flaps at the front of the belt, Remy heard a girlish squeal somewhere behind them. “Lane Anders! A-lo-ha!”
Remy exchanged an amused glance with his lover and turned to see a woman their age waving frantically as she ran towards them. From the way Lane described Michelle Banks, she had been an emo Goth chick who wore black all the time, but apparently Chell had reinvented herself when she moved to Hawaii. Or maybe the sun and the sand and the surf simply didn’t stand up to an all-black attire. When Remy had asked Lane if there were any recent pictures of Chell on Facebook, the answer had been no—the only photos she posted were of the ocean. He half-expected her to be three hundred pounds and hiding under a muumuu.
But he should’ve known better; she did surf, after all. The woman who ran up to them was athletic bordering on too thin, in a tank top that left too much tanned skin exposed on her neck and arms and chest and a long, sarong-style skirt that wrapped around her legs and fell all the way to the floor. On her feet were a pair of ragged flip-flops that were so thin, they didn’t appear to offer any protection at all.
The first thing Remy noticed about her was that Chell was bony, with spindly arms, knobby elbows, and barely-there breasts that jiggled in a way that said she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her upper arms were circled with black tribal tattoos, and from her wrists hung black leather ties, faded friendship bracelets, and braided hemp bands with shells woven into them. Around her neck, she wore a white puka shell necklace.
More than anything else, though, it was her hair that drew Remy’s attention, and once he started staring at it, he found he couldn’t look away. He didn’t think he had ever seen a white person with dreadlocks before, ever, and God, he hoped never to see another again. Chell’s hair was a dingy, dirty, dishwater shade of blonde that obviously hadn’t been brushed in…well, years. Just looking at it made Remy’s skin itch.
And there was so much of it! She had it pulled back from her face with a bandanna, and the dreads fell like fat ropes down her back almost to her waist. Smaller strands were braided, and some of these were dyed various shades of unnatural colors—pink, green, purple. A few of the dreads had small shells and sea glass woven into them, and there was even what looked like a real bird’s feather hanging below her left ear. The white and gray feather looked like something she’d found on the beach and picked up for the hell of it.
When she was close enough, she launched herself at Lane and shrieked, “Oh my God! You made it! Look at you!”
Remy widened his eyes in disbelief as he stared at the woman hugging his lover. This was the person he’d entrusted his wedding to? In a small voice, he muttered, “Holy Mother of God.”
He felt his son bump against him as Braden tried to slip out of sight. “Dad, who is that?”
“Yeah, Lane.” Remy cleared his throat. “Who is this?”
Lane extracted himself and took a step back. “Chell, you already know Remy. The man I’m marrying?”
Chell turned and, before Remy could think to move out of the way, she grabbed him in a fierce hug. She was stronger than she looked, and he caught a whiff of something fragrant from her hair that reminded him of his college days. Was marijuana legal in Hawaii? He didn’t think so…
“Remy, hey!” Chell squeezed him harder, until he thought his bladder might burst, but r
eleased him the moment he opened his mouth to say something about it. “And who’s the keiki?”
“This is my son, Braden.” Remy had to reach around behind himself to touch Braden’s shoulder. “Come on, Brae. Say hi.”
From somewhere behind him, Braden mumbled, “Hi.”
Chell bent down and peeked around Remy’s leg. “Aloha!” she cried. “That means hi here. Hello and goodbye.”
Braden moved around Remy, trying to stay out of view, but stopped as he processed what she’d said. “Wait, how’s one word mean the same thing?”
With a shrug, Chell flipped her hair over her shoulder and grinned. Remy had to admit she had the straightest, whitest teeth he’d ever seen, but that might’ve been because her tan was so deep. “I don’t know. It just does. Aloha also means love, and peace, and affection.”
Now Braden stepped out from behind his father, a familiar defiant jut to his chin. “Nuh-uh.”
Chell nodded. “Did you know Hawaii has its own alphabet? There are only thirteen letters in it. That’s half as many as in the English alphabet.”
Braden fisted his hand in Remy’s pants leg. “Dad, she’s teasing, isn’t she? That can’t be right.”
“Hawaii is also the only state to have a royal palace,” Chell continued.
Braden’s eyes nearly popped out of his head, and he looked up at Remy for confirmation. “What?”
Remy knew he had to step in. “Okay, mind blown,” he said, patting his son on the back. “Maybe we can get a rental car now, or something? I didn’t see anything about one in the packet you sent me…”
“Oh, I have a car, no probs.” Chell stood and stretched, seemingly unmindful of the way her shirt pulled up to expose her taut, tanned belly. Her skirt rode so low, Remy could see the top of the bikini bottoms she wore underneath. “If you have all your bags, let’s get you guys to your hotel. I hope you packed your summer clothes. I know it’s December, but you’re a little overdressed for Honolulu, believe you me.”
Chapter 6
