by Lori L. Otto
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to do it,” I tell him.
“We can go as slow as you want. I promise. Or as fast. It’s our first time. The romance is not in the act itself,” he says something that we’ve told each other for quite some time. “The romance is in the fact that we’re experiencing this together. The sex will get better over time.” He’s always so practical. We’re always so practical.
“You’re right.” I smile at him. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, Zai.”
3
Max
When I wake up Friday morning, I’m alarmed to find that Callen isn’t in bed with me. After flicking on the lights, I hear a groan from the couch.
“Turn off the fucking lights.” His head is burrowed in between the bottom and back cushions. One arm is swung over the top and one leg is hanging off the front. His muscles are going to be killing him when he tries to move.
“Why the hell are you over there?”
“It’s where I landed.” He slides his arm down and moans in pain. “Fuck.”
“Let me help you to the bed,” I offer. He doesn’t fight me as I put my arm under his shoulders and guide him to the comfortable king-size bed. He falls into it, though, on the side I’d been sleeping on. I don’t think he’s going to move again.
“Lights?”
I throw the shirt I’d worn yesterday over his head and leave the lights on.
“So, you’re still mad?”
“You’re still drunk.”
“Max, I’m trying,” he explains as he tucks the shirt over the top portion of his head to allow for his words to be understood.
“Trying to what?”
“Sober up.”
“You watched the video?”
“Of course, I did.”
“I uploaded that before eight last night. You still weren’t home at two in the fucking morning, Callen! Glad I’m a priority,” I tell him sarcastically.
“As soon as I watched it, I came back.”
“Bullshit. You check your phone every time a notification comes in.”
“We were in the pool. My phone wasn’t with me.”
“For six hours, you were in the pool?”
“We played volleyball for a while… regardless, I was busy and wasn’t checking my phone.”
“Ugh!” I yell. “That pisses me off even more! Your boyfriend, who you came on this trip with, isn’t with you, and you don’t even fucking bother to check your phone? What if I’d needed you? What if something happened?”
“You’re a big boy, Max. And if it was a real emergency, the hotel would have found me. It’s not like me and Trey can go and hide anywhere. People are following us around constantly.”
“Oh, poor you.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying we would have been easy to locate. Stop making a big deal out of that.”
“What were you doing out so late?” I ask him.
“I was with Trey and the guys. We were just talking, hanging out at the beach, and drinking. You can compare notes with Trey if you see him later today, if you don’t believe me.”
“Any reason I shouldn’t believe you? Why would you say that?”
“You seem to think I have something going on with someone here. You said so in the video. I’m just trying to allay your insecurities. That’s all.”
“Can you blame me?”
“You don’t trust me?”
“Just… shut up, Callen. You’re a different person when you’re drunk all the time.”
“Thought we weren’t going to fight about that here. You said we’d wait until we got home,” he reminds me of what I’d recorded.
“Fine. And don’t count on hanging out with Trey today. He got a video, too, and I guarantee he’ll be taking Zany’s ultimatum seriously.”
“Well,” Callen says, “it’s about time he got laid anyway.”
“Callen, I don’t understand why you don’t want to be with me,” I start, walking over to him and ripping the shirt off his head.
“Fuck,” he mutters again, blinking his eyes in obvious pain. “It’s not that, Max, it’s just that when do we get to go to St. Thomas with our friends–”
“Your friends.”
He hesitates before continuing. “Fine. My friends. When do we get to go to St. Thomas with my friends and see this part of the world and do whatever the hell we want? We can stay holed up in a room and fuck anytime.”
“Well, that’s not true. We can’t do that with any sort of regularity. If our parents are home, they’re constantly in our business to make sure that we’re doing everything but fucking.”
“But in a couple months, we’ll be in California–”
“Living an hour away from each other!”
“We’ll have weekends together. I may be able to drive out during the week.”
“I wanted this week with you!” I tell him honestly. “I’m sorry for being a complete cliché. I wanted you to want to spend time with me. To be all over me. To be openly out with me. To want me. To make love to me every night and have sex with me again in the morning.”
He sits up in the bed, his eyes pleading with mine. “All right. You’ll have that today. The rest of the time we’re here, I’m yours. I just didn’t realize that was your expectation for this trip. My agenda was to just let loose. I’m comfortable with you. I come home to you every night. I do want to be with you.”
“You’re complacent with me,” I correct him. “You’re taking me for granted.”
“I won’t anymore. That stops right now.”
“Okay,” I say, wanting to believe him. “I’m going to take a shower.”
“That’s cool. What time is it, anyway?”
“Just after eight.”
“I’m going to rest my eyes a little more. Is that okay?”
I nod my head and get a bottle of water for him on the way to the bathroom.
Under the steaming hot jets, I try to plan our day. I’ll give him another hour to sleep and order him room service in the hopes that the combination of water, rest, eggs and sausage will help to sober him up. After that, we can go lay out on the beach for a while and take it easy, maybe listen to some music together. We can go to Caret Bay and try to surf. I couldn’t get Zaina to do it, but I know Callen has wanted to show me how. After that, we can have a late lunch and follow it up with snorkeling. I’d been hoping we could go to one of the surf shops and buy all new swimming gear for our upcoming move to California. Follow all that up with dinner on the beach, and this day could begin to redeem him for the less than spectacular week it’s been.
After I dry off and get dressed for all the day’s activities, I return to the main room to get the room service menu, only to find Callen sitting up and watching ESPN. Next to him on the night stand is an empty beer bottle that wasn’t there before. In his hand is what appears to be scotch on the rocks. When I look on the dresser, his bottle of Glenfiddich is sitting out.
“Hair of the dog,” he says, trying to explain himself.
“Fuck you, Callen.” I stuff my phone and wallet in my pockets and glare at him, thinking about my next move. Grabbing his whiskey and moving quickly, I step out onto the balcony and close the door, tossing the half-full bottle onto the other side of the tiled patio and watching it shatter.
“That was a six-hundred-dollar bottle!” he yells at me when I come back inside to the room.
“Here’s a straw,” I tell him, throwing a coffee stirrer at him as I pass through the room on my way out. “Don’t act like you weren’t warned.” I ensure that the door slams behind me after I leave.
I start to go to Trey and Zaina’s room, what’s been my respite all week, but realize that her ultimatum is probably playing out much better than mine did. It’s Trey, after all, and he knows a good thing when he sees it. He’s going to do right by her; I have no doubt. I should leave my friends alone and give Zaina the day she’s been hoping for all week.
The pool has bec
ome Callen’s domain this week, so I don’t go near it. I stop by the main dining room for some breakfast, bypassing the buffet and ordering off the menu while making sure I charge it to the room. Out of spite, I order enough for four people and end up picking a little off each plate. I feel guilty for wasting so much food, having spent so much of my childhood hungry, but as soon as I remember Callen drinking his fucking scotch, anger overtakes all other emotions. I wish Will was home in New York and not off at school in Abu Dhabi. I need to vent, and even though I know he likes Callen, I know he’d be pissed to know how much he’d been drinking this week. He’d totally validate my feelings right now.
I decide to call Jon instead. I won’t get as much empathy, but I’ll still get some.
“You’re still alive!” my oldest brother exclaims. “We were all starting to worry.”
“Hi, Mascot!” I hear Livvy yell in the background. “Is Trey there, too?”
“No, no… tell her he’s getting his cherry popped right now,” I mumble.
“I, uh…” I’ve caught him off-guard, and I laugh. “Anatomically incorrect, and I am not gonna tell her that,” he says softly into the phone. “But good for him, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Liv, he’s not with Max,” he says back to his wife.
“Well, tell him we miss them both,” she says, clearly right next to Jon now.
“I will.”
“What’s up? You having a good time?”
“Nope.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m ready to come home,” I admit. “This week wasn’t what I expected at all.”
“How can paradise be less than what you expect? Huh?”
“Callen’s been a monumental dick. Trey has, too, for the record. They’ve been drunk the entire time.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep.”
“Seriously.” He’s letting the news set in. “Trey’s been drunk the whole time, huh?”
“What?” Livvy asks, once again in the distance.
“Can you two deal with that later? Me. This call’s about me.”
“Yeah, Mascot. Sorry. And I’m sorry Callen’s been an ass. I can’t believe he’d do that. I mean… I guess a little freedom will do that to kids. It’s not like they don’t drink when they can get away with it here.”
“I know, but… a little freedom should have given us the opportunity to do a lot of other things we can’t get away with at home, if you know what I mean. And he’s chosen Jack and Jim and Glen and Johnnie and every other whiskey and scotch over me. Fuck, he couldn’t get it up if he tried.”
“Have you tried talking to him?”
“I gave him an ultimatum last night. I told him today was my fucking day. And what’s he doing when I get out of the shower? Drinking. He’s on his second one. It wasn’t even ten yet.”
“What’d you say to him?”
“I spoke in a language he’d understand. I threw his fucking whiskey bottle out and shattered it to a million little pieces. Figured that said everything I needed to say.”
My brother chuckles on the other end of the line. “Hope it wasn’t a good one.”
“Six-hundred dollars.”
“Shit… I bet he’s pissed.”
“I’m pissed!”
“Rightfully so, Max. I’m surprised he didn’t take this trip with you more seriously. Sounds like he’s taking you for granted… you guys were doing okay before you left, right?”
“Yeah! Everything was great. We talked about what we were going to do on the island the entire plane ride here… but as soon as they started pouring alcohol, he was gone. He changed, and we haven’t done a single thing we’d planned. Well, Zaina and I have. It’s not like I’ve been moping in my room the whole time.”
“Good. I’m happy to hear that… now what are you going to do today?”
“I don’t know. Go to the beach?”
“About Callen,” he urges.
“Let him get fucked up again while I put on my own fucking sunscreen or wank off in my room, I guess.”
“Max… come on. You’ve got two more days there. Why don’t you try to work with him; distract him from the drinks. Maybe he just needed a little hair of the dog this morning…”
“That’s what he said. That’s bullshit.”
“Sometimes it makes people feel better. Maybe he was genuinely trying, buddy.”
“Well, fuck. He should know that’s no way to try with me.”
“He should know. But I bet you got your point across with him this morning, if he didn’t realize that already,” he says.
“Yeah. I probably shouldn’t have tossed that liquor like that.”
“Well, there’s a little dramatic flair behind it. Kind of a signature Max move, if you ask me. If he really knew you, he probably would have stashed that bottle away.”
“Don’t say shit like that,” I say, feeling defensive now. “He knows me.”
“I know. Go find him, buddy. Talk this out. Get some good, quality time together while you can–or else you’re both going to regret it. You have to take advantage of this time alone. Mom and his parents are never going to let up with you two. You’re never going to get that relaxing all-nighter at each other’s house. You’ve got this, and then you’ve got two months until college.”
“You’re right. But–”
“What?”
“Maybe, like, Shea would let us have her place when she’s at work since Will’s in Abu Dhabi.”
“Don’t even ask her that, Mascot. Their apartment is not your sex house. Shit,” he says, then scoffs.
“What about your loft?”
“Max? Fix this thing with you and Callen right now. Then maybe I’ll leave a key for you under the doormat the next time the Hollands extend an invite to Liv and the girls and me.”
“Our loft is not a sex house, either,” I hear Livvy say.
“Oh, yes, it is, baby,” he comes back playfully.
“I’m done here,” I tell him. “Hug Liv and kiss the nieces for me. Zaina helped me pick out some cute t-shirts for the babies.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“Charged ‘em to the room.”
“Well, thank Callen for me, then. And good luck, Mascot. You can handle this. You both have fought too hard for what you have to let a shitty week in paradise get in between you.”
“I’ve said you’re right. I’m not gonna keep saying it. Let me get off the phone so I can go find him.”
“Bye.”
“Bye, Jon.”
On my way out, my empathetic heart back intact and where it should be, I go through the free buffet line and make Callen a fresh waffle and pick out four plump pieces of sausage, which will hopefully help him with his hangover. After pocketing a handful of butter packets, I grab one of the small glass pitchers of syrup from a table while no one is watching. Thankfully, I spot the bundled silverware on my way out, or else Cal would have had a sticky mess to clean up after sating himself with unhealthy food.
I expect to see him back in bed when I return to the room, but he’s not there. I check in the bathroom and shower, even though I hear nothing. He’s not there either. Setting his breakfast aside, I call his cell phone. It rings behind me, connected to the charger on the nightstand.
“Fuck.”
Carefully navigating through the broken glass and whiskey on the balcony, I look in the pool for my boyfriend to see if he’s returned to his normal spot. I see some of his former classmates, but there’s no sign of him or of Trey. It’s good Trey’s not there: that means Zaina’s ultimatum may have worked much better than mine.
I send her a text to check, and in a round-about way to find out if she knows where Callen is.
- So? Was it everything you’d hoped it would be?
She begins typing almost immediately, which I don’t take as a good sign.
- - We haven’t done it yet, Max! It’s still morning!
- Barely. And… so?
-
- We’re going to spend the day together and work up to it.
- Whatever works for you guys.
- - How’s Callen treating you? Better, I hope.
I guess I got my answer. If she knew where he was, she’d know the answer to that question.
- As if I needed further confirmation, Callen is not Trey.
- - What do you mean?
- Never mind.
- - If you need Trey to come over there and talk some sense into him, I can spare him for a few minutes… for you.
- Pointless. He’s not here.
- - Where is he?
- Fuck if I know.
- - Did you fight?
I may have destroyed the one thing he liked better than me on this trip. I wanted his attention. Sue me.
- Don’t worry about it. I’ll find him and fix it.
- - If you’re sure.
- Go get your foreplay on and leave me alone, Zai. ;) Sorry I bugged you.
- - Good luck!
- Who needs luck when you’ve got what I’ve got to offer?
I turn my phone over and laugh to myself. Something in the pit of my stomach tells me I need luck, and all the faux arrogance in the world won’t fool me into believing I don’t.
4
Zaina
As Trey and I pick at one another’s lunches at the restaurant on the beach, I tell him about all the activities Max and I did throughout the week.
“So, the sky ride thing wasn’t all you’d hoped it would be?”
“It just made me realize what a tourist trap this island is. So many cruise ships and boats and it just felt claustrophobic. I wanted to immediately return to our little slice of the island. We’re spoiled at the Ritz,” she admits. “It feels so much more private and serene.”
“You mean we’re not all alone here?” he asks, teasing. I shake my head. “I don’t see anyone but you.” He picks up the back of my hand and kisses it. Upon glancing behind me, he changes his response. “And Max. I see you and Max.”
I turn around abruptly to see my best friend sitting alone at a table. “Where’s Callen?” It had been three hours since I texted Max. “Have you seen Callen with him?”
