The Homiemoon Read online

  Queasily, I dragged myself into the shower and got dressed. My stomach needed something greasy, and while I could’ve ordered up some room service, I needed to face the music eventually. Better to get it over with.

  Although, when I got to the downstairs café and saw Adam, I nearly turned around and walked straight on back upstairs.

  He was sitting at a patio table with Mikey, Dan, and Rich. Apparently they’d had the same idea as me, because burgers and fries were piled in front of them. My stomach flip-flopped. Would hunger or embarrassment win out? None of them had seen me yet, and I could just as easily leave.

  It only took a moment for hunger to get in the lead. I was going to have to see them eventually, and those burgers were freaking massive. Swallowing my pride, I headed over and slid into a chair beside them.

  “C-Dog!” Mikey exclaimed, slapping me on the back. “Glad you made it down. We were about to send up a search party.”

  Nausea rose, and I didn’t bother to disguise my grimace. “Go easy on me, I’m feeling a bit rough.”

  “The man of the hour,” Dan said, and Rich laughed along with him.

  Adam was silent. I would’ve said oddly silent, except that considering how I’d probably mortified him last night, it wasn’t odd at all.

  I wished I could remember how he’d reacted to my proposal. Would he laugh it off, or was he going to hate me forever?

  Shielding my eyes from the sun, I gave all of them a weak smile. “Wouldn’t the man of the hour be Tim?”

  “Not anymore,” Dan said. “You stole his spotlight.”

  Ugh… I really did, didn’t I? I was the one making the rounds on YouTube. “Can we not talk about this?” I asked. “Tim got married. There must’ve been something interesting that happened other than me getting shitfaced.”

  “Not really,” Dan said. “Did it, guys?”

  “Nope,” Mikey said just as Rich put in, “Not that I recall.”

  Hmm, still nothing from Adam. At least Mikey seemed to think it was funny—I’d been a little worried after seeing him boot me off the stage. At the moment, though, Adam’s opinion mattered more than anyone else’s.

  “Are you okay?” I asked him softly. “I’m sorry I brought you into that. I honestly don’t know what the hell I was thinking.”

  He gave a nervous laugh. “I’m fine. I vote we all forget about it.”

  “But you two should go on a homiemoon,” Dan said. “How’d you even come up with that, Calvin? Spur of the moment brilliance?”

  “Guess so.”

  “I think it’s a great idea,” Mikey said. “You two have to do it for real.”

  The others agreed, while Adam said nothing. Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him. As much as I was dying to see his reaction, I couldn’t risk meeting his eyes.

  “Yeah, whatever,” I finally said as I waved over a waitress. “I’m going to order, and then we’re going to talk about something else.”

  To my great pleasure, the guys eased up on me a bit after that. They even let me go quiet for a while as I chowed down on my burger—which was just as juicy and delicious as it looked.

  Being here without Tim was actually kind of strange. The group generally hung out as a unit. I hung out with Tim. From what I could tell, Dan chilled with Rich, and Adam with Mikey. That was how it’d been for the past several years.

  Not that the other guys weren’t my buddies, but I’d pulled away from chilling with Adam one on one, and I was suddenly conscious that I’d never been particularly close with the rest of them.

  The group dynamics were just kind of like that. With Tim gone, things were different.

  Whenever Adam got married, I’d be the only single one left. He seemed pretty sure he wouldn’t be doing that anytime soon, but again, he had that face and that body. I snuck a glance at him, reminding myself of his tanned skin and short blond hair. Sure, his body had gone a tiny bit softer now that we were nearing thirty, but he was honestly sexy as hell. The second he decided to get married, every girl in town would be lining up to be with him.

  “Spacing out in shame, C-Dog?” Mikey waved a hand in my face. “You’re okay, man. You know, you’re hardly the first person to get wasted at a wedding.”

  “They’re kind of known for it,” Dan added.

  “Just hung over,” I said with a shrug. “I think I can live with myself. I seem to remember a few of you having some drunken mishaps over the years.”

  “That time we went to Vegas and Rich started trying to dance on the stripper poles,” Dan immediately said.

  I snorted. That one had really taken me by surprise—Rich tended to be on the quiet side and usually followed Dan around.

  “How about the time Dan brought two girls back to the frat house and passed out before he could bang either of them?” Mikey said.

  Another round of laughter. If we got to telling Dan’s drunk stories, we could keep going for hours. No one had anything on Mikey, though—he was like the dad of our group.

  I tried not to sigh as I looked around the table. These stories tended to center on my friends’ rampant heterosexuality. No wonder I didn’t hang out with them when we weren’t in a crowd. Despite how long we’d been friends, I was never quite going to fit in with them.

  Dan laughed loudly and wiped a dot of ketchup from his mouth. “Shit, you guys remember when we went on spring break and Adam kept trying to lick Calvin’s abs?”

  I gulped as I remembered it. We’d been day drinking in Punta Cana, not that we even needed the alcohol. All of us were high on the exhilaration of being with friends and being away from home.

  I’d been thinking about splitting from the group and searching for a gay club. Casual hook-ups were something I did at the time, and with my friends obsessing over getting women, I felt like getting laid on vacation was almost mandatory.

  Then Adam had started in with this thing, and I’d sized him up, wondering if he was really as hetero as he appeared.

  “What the hell was with you that day, A-Dog?” Mikey guffawed. “I’ve never seen you like that before or since.”

  Adam shrugged. “Drunk off my ass, and what can I say? Calvin had nice abs.”

  “Has nice abs, I’ll have you know.” I lifted my shirt.

  The guys laughed uproariously, and I let my eyes glide back over to Adam.

  Back in the day, I’d decided he was straight. With those eyes and those cheeks and those cute fucking freckles, he was too hot to not be.

  Or had I just decided it was too much of a risk to find out?

  4

  Three—Adam

  “Heading home, A-Dog?” Mikey asked at two o’clock in the hotel lobby.

  His wife Kim stood at his side, holding both of their bags. She looked less than eager to stay and chat—I guessed she wanted to get home for another round of baby-making. They’d been trying since they tied the knot several months ago, but no luck so far.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Guess so.”

  He waited as I gave my key back at the desk. “You’re really doing all right?” he asked as we headed for the elevator. “You’ve been quiet all day.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “That speech, though.”

  “I can’t believe Calvin would do that to you,” Kim put in. “It’s not like him at all.”

  “You have to remember he’s turning thirty and still single,” Mikey told her. “It can’t be easy. I mean—” He seemed to remember I was right there with them. “Not that there’s anything wrong with being single.”

  I nodded, more because I wanted to end the conversation than anything else. “No, it’s fair. I know what you mean.”

  We stepped out into the underground parking lot, and Mikey pulled out his keys. “Honestly, I think it’s great that you two are doing your own thing. I really do.”

  Except that when he was behind closed doors, apparently he told his wife how much he felt sorry for us. How lonely we had to be, and how pathetic it was that we hadn’t found someone by the gra
nd old age of thirty…

  “Right,” I said. “And the speech was no big deal. It just took me by surprise that Calvin would focus on me like that. I wish people would move on and talk about something else.”

  “True,” Mikey said. “No one even mentioned how this one tripped and knocked over a chair the second we stood up to dance.” He gave his wife a loving look.

  If he was trying to make me feel better, it wasn’t working. That casual affection between them… it was nothing to the two of them, but for me it seemed unattainable. I was turning thirty, and my entire relationship history consisted of a few scattered one-night stands.

  As I headed for my car, I wondered why things had gone so differently for me than for my friends. With the exception of Calvin, they’d all fallen easily into relationships with a minimal amount of drama or angst. When they’d decided they were ready to get married, they’d proposed to their girlfriends, who’d happily accepted. They made it look so easy.

  None of it had happened that way for me. Some girls had pursued me over the years, but none had really caught my interest. I tended to be comfortable having them as friends. I never got the unrestrainable urge to tear their clothes off that other guys talked about.

  The hook-ups I’d tried had been okay. The act itself felt good. I couldn’t really complain. But then the girls wanted to get all kissy and cuddly, and I guessed I wasn’t the type who wanted to go out for breakfast after. I actually preferred if the girl was gone as soon as we’d both gotten off… but telling someone that straight out would be a huge insult. In the end I’d pretty much lost interest in one-night stands altogether.

  I unlocked my car, still considering. It didn’t seem fair to the girl if I tried to force a relationship when the lovey-dovey feelings weren’t there. But based on my reaction to this latest wedding, it seemed like I wanted to be in a relationship. Maybe I’d give it a try.

  There was a woman at my work whose eyes always lingered on me longer than they needed to. She wasn’t unattractive, and I’d enjoyed the conversations we’d had so far. Enjoying your partner’s company was the most important thing in a relationship, wasn’t it? Maybe the feelings would grow over time.

  “Adam?”

  I looked up, shivering slightly when my gaze landed on Calvin. “Hey. I was just heading out.”

  “I see that.” He had his own keys in his hand and was twirling them around a finger. “I wasn’t following you so I could make a big thing out of this, or anything. I just saw you leaving so I figured I should say bye.”

  “Yeah, cool. We can definitely forget it ever happened.”

  “Aside from that YouTube video floating around.” Calvin saw my surprise, and quickly explained. “Someone filmed me and threw it on the Internet. Don’t worry, they didn’t show you at all.”

  “Ah, okay. I’m sure no one would be interested, anyway.”

  “Actually, there were a couple hundred views last time I checked. I’d show you, if we weren’t underground.”

  “I’ll look it up when I get home.”

  He shook his head wildly. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I want to see how popular you get.” I gave half a smile.

  “More like you want to relive me asking you on a homiemoon.”

  We both laughed, and I leaned against the car, getting comfortable. “You know, it’s not the worst idea. Our birthdays, our student loans… I would’ve been down for a homiemoon.”

  “You’d really want to?”

  “Sure.” I shrugged. “We haven’t even chilled in forever, just the two of us. Maybe it’s time to change that. Shit’s been different ever since Mikey got married—not that I don’t like the rest of you guys, but he’s my best buddy in the group. And Tim’s yours, and now he’s hitched. It’s only natural that you and me should do some bro bonding.”

  Something about the way he looked at me threw me off-balance. There was an intensity in his gaze—did he usually look at me like that? Or did we not spend enough time together for me to notice it?

  “Well, let’s get together sometime,” Calvin said. “Just, maybe not a homiemoon.”

  “Maybe not a homiemoon,” I laughed, and got into the car.

  * * *

  The apartment seemed unusually empty when I got back. Emptier than usual, although I’d been living on my own for the past seven years. I supposed being around more people than usual this weekend made me feel more alone now.

  I hung my key on its hook and stepped out of my shoes. The wedding had been so crowded, and I’d spoken to so many people. Tons of old friends from our college days showed up for these occasions.

  I’d had my own room at the hotel, but I’d been out with the guys until late last night, and then they’d wanted to meet for breakfast as soon as I woke up in the morning. It was nice having company at the start and the end of the day. I guessed marriage would be like that, except every day. The thought made me a little wistful.

  I filled a glass with water and poured it over my basil plant, then the thyme. These herbs were my most consistent company lately. I never missed our monthly poker night, but other than that, Mikey was busy trying to make a baby and I didn’t have too many friends outside this group.

  It wasn’t that I was desperate to get married. A lifetime commitment was a lot to sign up for, and I didn’t even have anyone in mind. There was the girl at work, but that was a vague idea. I barely knew her.

  “I’m just a little lonely,” I said out loud.

  And now I was talking to myself as well. Maybe hanging out with Calvin was a better idea than I’d even realized. He lived nearby, and we’d always gotten along. If we could reconnect on a deeper level, we could potentially hang out all the time.

  I liked Calvin, and I wanted to get to know him again. Somehow that idea appealed to me more than finding some random woman to date and marry. I wouldn’t just be doing it because society told me this was the time. I’d be doing it because I wanted to.

  Laughing softly to myself, I opened my laptop and sprawled onto the couch. A quick search for “homiemoon” brought up the video. Already ten thousand views? I thought Calvin said there were only a couple hundred.

  I clicked, half-afraid of what I’d see. I knew what’d happened, of course, but did I really want to relive the awkwardness? I was curious, though. I’d cheered for Calvin when he started to speak, but as soon as he said my name, I’d kind of frozen. I’d barely heard him, I’d only been aware of Mikey pulling him off the stage.

  So I watched, shaking my head again at the amount of views. That was crazy! Had some site picked up the story, or something? Why were people so interested in this?

  I scrolled down to the comments section, hoping there’d be some clues there. But the first thing I saw there pushed everything else out of my head.

  Celebrate the bond of male friendships! the commenter had said. Click here to contribute to Calvin and Adam’s homiemoon!

  5

  Four—Adam

  “We could do it,” I said.

  Calvin drained his glass of orange juice. I guessed after the other night, he wouldn’t be drinking much for a while. “No, we can’t.”

  A canine tongue lapped at my forearm, and I stroked Buddy’s head. He was a sweetheart, a greyhound mix with a brown back and a white chest. I hadn’t seen him in years, but apparently he remembered me. Or maybe he licked everybody. I preferred the first option.

  “We have to do it,” I said, settling into the armchair beside Calvin’s. “A bunch of complete strangers raised a thousand bucks for this. It’d be such a waste to give that up.”

  Calvin bit his lip. “Can’t we donate the money to charity, or something?”

  “No. It’ll just go back to the donors if we don’t take it. And they gave it to us for a specific reason.”

  “It’s stupid, though,” he said. “If we were really going to go on a homiemoon, we’d be more than capable of paying for ourselves.”

  “Well, maybe people figured out we
weren’t going to go through with your drunken idea unless we had a little motivation.” I grinned at him. “Come on, why not? We were just talking about how we wanted to hang out more, anyway.”

  “Yeah, but that’s different,” he muttered. “It was a terrible idea from the start, and free money isn’t going to make me go.”

  I returned my attention to the dog. Apparently Buddy was friendlier than his owner. “What’s so wrong with going?” I asked, trying to keep the tinge of hurt out of my voice.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to,” Calvin rushed to say.

  “Could’ve fooled me.”

  “I just can’t get the time off work.”

  Hmm… okay. He was a bank manager, and they weren’t exactly known for being flexible with vacation time. “Not even a day or two? A homiemoon doesn’t have to be long. If you took a Thursday and Friday, we’d have a solid four days together.”

  “Maybe…”

  “Come on, man. We’ve got a grand coming to us for absolutely no reason other than to have a good time. Think about all the hijinks we could get up to.”

  A smile broke across his face. “Hijinks, Adam? Really?”

  “We could go so many places,” I said. “What’ve you always wanted to see?”

  “It’s not happening.” He wiggled his fingers at Buddy, who immediately headed over to his armchair. And I thought that dog was on my side.

  But hey, I knew who would be on my side. “Text the other guys,” I said. “See what they think.”

  “Fine, I will.”

  He grabbed his phone, and a second later my own vibrated. He’d sent a group text to all of us.

  >Calvin: So a bunch of internet people crowdfunded for Adam and me to go on that homiemoon. Should we do it? He says yes, I say no.

  Responses started appearing almost immediately.

  >Dan: Are you fucked in the head? Of course you should do it!

  >Rich: Agree with Dan. Especially if it’ll stop you two sulking over being single.